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NEW VOICES 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO.. Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



NEW VOICES 



AN INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY 
POETRY 



BY 
MARGUERITE WILKINSON 



Nm fork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1919 

All rights reserved 



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Copyright, igig 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published June, igig 



©CI.A525898 

JUN 18 !9!9 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

J. SCOTT CLARK, A. M., LITT. D. 

PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 

AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, 1892-I9II, 

THIS WORK OF A PUPIL 

Quaecumque sunt vera, 
Proba, justa, mera. 
Omnia hiec dona 
Praebes nobis bona, 
Alma Mater cara, 
Benedicta, clara, 
Celsa in honore 
Nostro et amore. 

University Hymn by J. Scott Clark. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

The thanks of the author are due to the following publishers and 
editors for their kind permission to reprint the following selections 
for which they hold copyright: 

To The Macmillan Company for "Penetralia" and "The Winds," 
from "Poems," by Madison Cawein; for "Spring Sows Her Seeds,'" 
from "The Drums in Our Street," by Mary Carolyn Davies; for 
"Breakfast," "The Father," "The Messages," and "The Old Bed," 
from "Battle and other Poems," by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson; for "Up 
A Hill and A Hill" and "Moon Folly," from "Myself and I," by 
Fannie Stearns Davis Gifford; for "Broadway," from "Poems and 
Ballads," by Hermann Hagedorn; for "Transformations" and "The 
Wind Blew Words," from "Moments of Vision," by Thomas Hardy; 
for "The Bull," from "Poems," by Ralph Hodgson; for "The Santa 
F6 Trail," "Aladdin and the Jinn" and "The Leaden-Eyed," from 
"The Congo and other Poems," by Vachel Lindsay; for "The Broncho 
That Would not be Broken," from "The Chinese Nightingale and 
Other Poems," by Vachel Lindsay; for "Patterns" and "The Bom- 
bardment," from "Men, Women and Ghosts," by Amy Lowell; for 
"Old Age," from "Collected Poems," by Percy Mackaye; for "Ships," 
from "The Story of the Round House," by John Masefield; for 
"Cargoes" and "A Consecration," from "Salt Water Ballads and 
Poems," by John Masefield; for one sonnet from "Lollingdon Downs," 
by John Masefield; for "Isaiah Beethoven," "Lucinda Matlock" and 
"Anne Rutledge," from "The Spoon River Anthology," by Edgar 
Lee Masters; for "Draw the Sword, O RepubHc" and "My Light with 
Yours," from "Toward the Gulf," by Edgar Lee Masters; for "Mys- 
tery" and "Interlude," from "The New Day," by Scudder Middle- 
ton; for "Love Song" and "Mountain Song," from "You and I," by 
Harriet Monroe; for "The Child's Heritage," from "The Quest," by 
John G. Neihardt; for "Flammonde," from "The Man against the 
Sky," by Edwin Arlington Robinson; for "Deirdre," from "Songs 
from the Clay," by James Stephens; for "In the Poppy Field," from 
"The Hill of Vision," by James Stephens; for "On the Day when the 

vii 



viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Lotus Bloomed," from "Gitanjali," by Rabindranath Tagore; for 
two narratives from "Fruit-Gathering," by Rabindranath Tagore; 
for "Leaves" and "The Answer," from "Rivers to the Sea," by Sara 
Teasdale; for "Peace," "I Would Live in Your Love" and "The 
Lamp," from "Love Songs," by Sara Teasdale; for "The Flight," 
from "The Fhght and other Poems," by George Edward Woodberry; 
for "The Song of Wandering Aengus," from "Poems," by William 
Butler Yeats; for the lyric beginning "The Wind Blows out of the 
Gates of Day," from "The Land of Heart's Desire," by William But- 
ler Yeats: 

To Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company for "After Two Years," by 
Richard Aldington, from "Some Imagist Poets, 1916"; for "Dawn," 
by Richard Aldington from "Some Imagist Poets, 1917"; for "Her 
W^ords," from "The Shoes that Danced and other Poems," by Anna 
Hempstead Branch; for "An Unbeliever," from "The Heart of the 
Road," by Anna Hempstead Branch; for two poems, each called 
"Song," from "Poems," by Florence Earle Coates; for "Sea Gods," 
by H. D., from "Some Imagist Poets, 1916"; for "Windmills," by 
John Gould Fletcher, from "Arizona Poems," in "Some Imagist 
Poets, 1916 "; for one strophe from "Lincoln," by John Gould Fletcher 
in "Some Imagist Poets, 1917" and for one strophe from "Irradia- 
tions," by John Gould Fletcher; for "Pandora's Song," from "The 
Firebringer," by William Vaughn Moody; for "Love Is a Terrible 
Thing," from "The Sister of the Wind," by Grace Fallow Norton; 
for "The House and the Road" and "The Cedars," from "The 
Singing Leaves," by Josephine Preston Peabody; for "Frost in 
Spring" and "Patrins," from "The Door of Dreams," by Jessie B. 
Rittenhouse; for "Scum O' The Earth," from the volume of the same 
name by Robert Haven Schauffler; for "Vistas" and "Certain Amer- 
ican Poets," from "A Lonely Flute," by Odell Shepard: 

To Messrs Henry Holt & Company for "The Cuckoo" and "The 
Virgin's Slumber Song," from "My Ireland," by Francis Carlin; for 
"Comrade Jesus," from "Portraits and Protests," by Sarah N. Cleg- 
horn; for "An Old Woman of the Roads" and "The Furrow and the 
Hearth," from "Wild Earth and other Poems," by Padraic Colum; 
for "Miss Loo" and "The Listeners," from "The Listeners," by 
Walter de la M-dve*, for "Jim Jay" and "Silver," from "Peacock 
Pie," by Walter de la Mare; for "The Sound of the Trees," "The Gum 
Gatherer," "An Old Man's Winter Night," "The Cow in Apple 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix 

Time" and "Brown's Descent," from "Mountain Interval," by- 
Robert Frost; for "Fog," "Monotone" and "ChUd," from "Cliicago 
Poems," by Carl Sandburg; for "Loam," "Cool Tombs" and "Mono- 
syllabic," from " Cornhuskers," by Carl Sandburg; for "A Cyprian 
Woman: Greek Folk Song" and "Remembrance: Greek Folk Song," 
from "The Factories and other Poems," by Margaret Widdemer; for 
"The Dark Cavalier," from "The Old Road to Paradise and other 
Poems," by Margaret Widdemer: 

To The Century Company for "Merchants from Cathay," from the 
volume of the same name by William Rose Benet; for "After Sunset," 
from The Century Magazine, by Grace Hazard Conkling; for "Seal 
Lullaby" and Road-Song of the Bandar-Log," from "The Jungle 
Book," by Rudyard Kipling; for "Cherry Way," from "The Night 
Court and other Verse," by Ruth Comfort Mitchell; for "Said the 
Sun," from "War and Laughter," by James Oppenheim; for "The 
Runner in the Skies," from "Songs for the New Age," by James 
Oppenheim; for "Daybreak," from The Century Magazine, by Louis 
Untermeyer; for "How Much of Godhood" and "Caliban in the Coal 
Mines," from "Challenge," by Louis Untermeyer: 

To Messrs Charles Scribner's Sons for "Path Flower," from the 
volume of the same name by Olive Tilford Dargan; for "At Night" 
and "Maternity," from "Poems," by Alice Meynell; for "I Have a 
Rendezvous with Death," from "Poems," by Alan Seeger; for "Rich- 
ard Cory," from "The Children of the Night," by Edwin Arlington 
Robinson; for "Miniver Cheevy," from ^'The Town Down the 
River," by Edwin Arlington Robinson; for several sentences from 
"The Enjoyment of Poetry," by Max Eastman: 

To The John Lane Company for two sonnets called "The Dead" 
from "The Collected Poems" of Rupert Brooke; for "Lepanto" from 
"Poems," by G. K. Chesterton; for "Da Leetla Boy" from "Car- 
mina," by Thomas Augustine Daly; for "The Iron Music" and "The 
Old Houses of Flanders," from "On Heaven and Poems Written on 
Active Service," by Ford Madox Hueffer; for "I Sat among the 
Green Leaves," from "The Lamp of Poor Souls," by Majorie L. C. 
Pickthall: 

To Mr. Alfred Knopf for "Coming to Port" and " Invocation," 
from "Colors of Life," by Max Eastman; for "The Fox" and "Said a 
Blade of Grass," from "The Madman," by Kahlil Gibran; for "As- 



X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

sault Heroic," from "Fairies and Fusiliers," by Robert Graves; for 
"Homage," by Helen Hoyt, from "Others: An Anthology of the New 
Verse"; for "Little Things," from "Asphalt and Other Poems," by 
Orrick Johns; for "Idealists" and "Old Manuscript," from "Mush- 
rooms," by Alfred Kreymborg; for lyrics by William H. Davies: 

To Messrs Harper & Brothers for "Paper Roses" and "Roses in the 
Subway," from "Poems," by Dana Burnet; for "The Ballad of The 
Cross," by Theodosia Garrison; for "The Path of the Stars," by 
Thomas E. Jones, Jr., from Harper^ s Magazine; for "The Birth" from 
"Dreams and Dust," by Don Marquis; for "Sacrifice," from "Flower 
O' the Grass," by Ada Foster Murray: 

To Mr. Mitchell Kennerley for a selection from "The New World," 
by Witter Bynner; for two sonnets from "Sonnets of a Portrait 
Painter," by Arthur Davison Ficke; for "The Jew to Jesus," from the 
volume of the same name by Florence Kiper Frank; for "Renascence," 
from the volume of the same name by Edna St. Vincent Millay; for 
"Psalm," by Jessie E. Sampter, from "The Lyric Year": 

To Messrs. Doubleday Page & Company for "The Dying Patriot," 
from "The Collected Poems of James Elroy Flecker; for "The Man 
with the Hoe," from "The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems," 
copyright, 1899 by Edwin Markham; for "Lincoln," from "Lincoln 
and Other Poems," copyright, 1901, by Edwin Markham; for "The 
Fugitives," from "The Far Country," by Florence Wilkinson; for 
"The Flower Factory," from "The Ride Home," by Florence Wil- 
kinson: 

To Messrs. George H. Doran Company for " A Lynmouth Widow," 
from "In Deep Places," by Amelia Josephine Burr; for "My Mirror," 
from "Candles that Burn," by Aline Kilmer; for "Trees," "Martin," 
and "Rouge Bouquet," from the memorial edition of "Joyce Kilmer: 
Poems, Essays and Letters," edited by Robert Cortes Halliday: 

To Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Company for "Around the Sun," from 
"The Retinue and Other Poems," by Katharine Lee Bates, copy- 
right, 1918; for "The Common Street," from "A Chant of Love 
for England and Other Poems," by Helen Gray Cone; for "The 
Kiss" and "Absolution," from "The Old Huntsman and Other 
Poems," by Siegfried Sassoon: 

To Messrs. Frederick A. Stokes Company for "Grieve not for 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi 

Beauty," from "Grenstone Poems," by Witter Bynner; for "Nearer" 
and "Out of Trenches: The Barn, Twilight," copyright, 1918, by 
Robert Nichols; for "Forty Singing Seamen," from the volume of 
the same name by Alfred Noyes: 

To The Four Seas Company for "Dawn" and "After Two Years," 
from "Images," by Richard Aldington; for "The Morning Song of 
Senlin" and two lyrics from "Variations," all from "The Charnel 
Rose and Other Poems," by Conrad Aiken: 

To Mr. Thomas B. Mosher for "Love Came Back at Fall O' Dew" 
and "A Christmas Folk Song," from "A Wayside Lute," by Lizette 
Woodworth Reese; and for "Frost To-night," from "The Flower from 
the Ashes," by Edith M. Thomas: 

To Mr. Ralph Fletcher Seymour for "What Dim Arcadian Pas- 
tures" and "Two Voices," from "The Spinning Woman of the Sky," 
by Alice Corbin, and for "The Most Sacred Mountain" from "Pro- 
files from China," by Eunice Tietjens: 

To Mr. B. W. Huebsch for "So Beautiful You are Indeed," from 
"Songs to Save a Soul," by Irene Rutherford McLeod; for "Clay 
Hills," from "Growing Pains," by Jean Starr Untermeyer: 

To Stewart & Kidd Company for "The Strong Woman," from "The 
Man Sings," by Roscoe Gilmore Stott, published by Stewart & Kidd 
Company: 

To Mr. A. M. Robertson for "The Black Vulture," from "The 
House of Orchids," by George Sterling; for "The Last Days," from 
"Beyond the Breakers," by George Sterling: 

To Mr. David McKay for "Perennial May," from "Songs of Wed- 
lock," by Thomas Augustine Daly; for "Da Leetla Boy," from "Can- 
zoni," by Thomas Augustine Daly: 

To The Yale University Press for "The Falconer of God," from 
the volume of the same name by William Rose Benet: 

To The Manas Press for "Cinquains," from "Verse," by Adelaide 
Crapsey: 

To Mr. James Terry White for "Canticle," from "City Pastorals," 
by WilUam Griffith: 



xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

To Mr. William Stanley Braithwaite for "Spring," by John Gould 
Fletcher; and for "Good Company," by Karle Wilson Baker, both 
poems originally published in The Poetry Review and now included in 
The Golden Treasury of Magazine Verse: 

To Messrs. Dufiield & Company for "The Vigil of Joseph," from 
"The Frozen Grail," by Elsa Barker; for "June" and "Desire in 
Spring," from "Songs of The Fields," by Francis Ledwidge: 

To The Page Company for "Lord of My Heart's Elation," from 
"The Green Book of the Bards," by Bliss Carman, copyright, 1903: 

To Messrs. Boni & Liveright for "CaUing-One's-Own," from 
"The Path on the Rainbow," edited by George Cronyn: 

To Messrs. Small, Maynard & Company for "An April Morning," 
from "April Airs," by Bhss Carman, copyright, 1916, reprinted by 
permission of the publishers, Small, Maynard & Company, Inc. : 

To Messrs. Dodd, Mead and Company for "Symbols" from 
"Poems: 1908- 19 14," by John Drink water: 

To Mr. Richard G. Badger for "Grandmither," from "April Twi- 
lights," by Willa Sibert Gather: 

To the Woodberry Society for one sonnet from "Ideal Passion," 
by George Edward Woodberry: 

To Mr. John Hall Wheelock for "Nirvana," from "The Beloved 
Adventure," published by Sherman, French & Company: 

To Mr. Egmont Arens for a selection from "Night," by James 
Oppenheim: 

To the Little Book Publishing Company for "A Woman," from 
"Streets and Faces," by Scudder Middleton: 

To the Oxford University Press, Toronto, Canada, for "I Sat 
Among the Green Leaves," from "The Lamp of Poor Souls," by 
Marjorie L. C. Pickthall: 

To the Editors of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse for "Tampico," by 
Grace Hazard Conkhng; for " Sunrise on Rydal Water," by John 
Drinkwater; for "Indian Summer," by William Ellery Leonard; 
for "Maternity," by Alice Meynell; for "In the Mohave," by 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii 

Patrick Orr; for "A Day for Wandering," by Clinton Scollard; 
for "Who Loves the Rain," by Frances Shaw; for "The Bacchante 
to Her Babe," by Eunice Tietjens; for "The Bird and the Tree," and 
"Santa Barbara Beach," by Ridgely Torrence; for "Down Fifth 
Avenue," by John Curtis Underwood; for "On the Great Plateau," 
by Edith Wyatt: 

To The Yale Review for "Ash Wednesday," by John Erskine; and 
for "Earth," by John Hall Wheelock: 
To The North American Review for "Motherhood," by Agnes Lee: 
To The Independent for "Phantasm of War: The Cornucopia of 
Red and Green Comfits," by Amy Lowell: 

To The Touchstone for "The Time Clock," by Charles Hanson 
Towne: 

To The Outlook for "Night's Mardi Gras," by Edward J. Wheeler: 
To The Nation for "Standards," by Charles Wharton Stork: 
To Much Ado of St. Louis for "Rain, Rain," by Zoe Akins: 
To The Los Angeles Graphic for "White Iris," by Pauline B. Barring- 
ton: 

To The New York Sun for " God You have been Too Good to Me," 
by Charles Wharton Stork: 

To The New York Times for "Epitaph," by Louis Driscoll: 
To Mr. Samuel Roth for his sonnet: 

The brief quotations from Clement Wood's poetry are taken from 
"Glad of Earth/' published by Laurence J. Gomme: 

The brief quotations from the work of Ezra Pound are to be 
found in ''Lustra" (Knoff) and in " Provenca " (Small, Maynard) 
and in the files of Poetry A Magazine of Verse. 

The thanks of the author are due, also, to the following publishers 
in Great Britain and Ireland for the privilege of reprinting the follow- 
ing selections published by them: 

To Messrs. Macmillan & Company, Ltd., London, for "Transfor- 
mations" and "The Wind Blew Words," from "Moments of Vision," 
by Thomas Hardy; for "Seal Lullaby" and "Road-Song of the 
Bandar-Log," from "The Jungle Book," by Rudyard Kipling; for 



xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

"Deirdre," from "Songs from the Clay," by James Stephens; for two 
narratives from "Fruit-Gathering," by Rabindranath Tagore; and 
for "On the Day when the Lotus Bloomed," from "Gitanjali," by 
Rabindranath Tagore; for "The Song of Wandering Aengus," from 
"Poems," by William Butler Yeats, and for the lyric beginning "The 
Wind Blows out of the Gates of Day," from "The Land of Heart's 
Desire," by William Butler Yeats: 

To Messrs. Constable & Company, Ltd., for "Jim Jay " and "Sil- 
ver," from "Peacock Pie," by Walter de la Mare, and for "Listeners" 
and "Miss Loo," from "The Listeners," by Walter de la Mare; for 
"I Have a Rendezvous with Death," from "Poems," by Alan Seeger; 
for "Windmills" and brief quotations from poems by John Gould 
Fletcher, for "Sea Gods," by H. D., and for "Dawn" and "After Two 
Years," by Richard Aldington, from "Some Imagist Poets, 1916" and 
"Some Imagist Poets, 1917": 

To Mr. Elkin Mathews for "Cargoes'' from "Ballads" and "A 
Consecration," from "Salt Water Ballads" for "The End of the 
World," from "Chambers of Imagery, Second Series," by Gordon 
Bottomley; for "Breakfast," "The Father," "The Messages" and 
"The Old Bed," from "Battle and Other Poems," by Wilfrid Wilson 
Gibson: 

To Mr. William Heinemann for "The Kiss" and "Absolution," 
from "The Old Huntsman and Other Poems," by Siegfried Sassoon; 
for "Assault Heroic" from "Fairies and Fusiliers," by Robert Graves; 
for "Ships," by John Masefield, and for one sonnet from "Lollingdon 
Downs and Sonnets," by John Masefield: 

To Messrs. Maunsel & Company, Ltd., Dublin, for "In the Poppy 
Field," from "The Hill of Vision," by James Stephens; for "The Old 
Woman," from "Irishry," by Joseph Campbell; for "The Furrow and 
the Hearth" and "An Old Woman of the Roads," from "Wild Earth 
and Other Poems," by Padraic Colum: 

To John Lane, The Bodley Head, London, for "The Iron Music" 
and "The Old Houses of Flanders," from "On Heaven and Poems 
Written on Active Service," by Ford Madox Hueffer; for "I Sat 
Among the Green Leaves," from "The Lamp of Poor Souls," by 
Marjorie L. C. Pickthall: 

To Messrs. Chatto & Windus for "So Beautiful You are Indeed," 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv 

from "Songs to Save a Soul," by Irene Rutherford McLeod, and for 
"Nearer" and "Out of Trenches: The Barn, Twilight," by Robert 
Nichols: 

To Messrs. J. M. Dent & Sons for "The Common Street," from 
"A Chant of Love for England and Other Poems," by Helen Gray 
Cone; for "Path Flower," from the volume of the same name by 
OUve Tilford Dargan: 

To Messrs. Sidgwick and Jackson for two sonnets, "The Dead," by 
Rupert Brooke, and for "Symbols" and "Sunrise on Rydal Water," 
by John Drinkwater: 

To Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton for "Trees," "Martin," and 
"Rouge Bouquet," by Joyce Kilmer: 

To Mr. A. C. Fifield for "Days Too Short," "The Rain" and 
"Nature's Friend," by William H. Davies: 

To Mr. Grant Richards for "The Runner in the Skies," from 
"Songs for the New Age," by James Oppenheim: 

To Messrs. Burns and Gates for "At Night" and "Maternity," by 
AHce Meynell, and for "Lepanto," by G. K. Chesterton: 

To Messrs William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh, London, for 
"Forty Singing Seamen," by Alfred Noyes: 

To Messrs. Herbert Jenkins, Ltd., for "Desire in Spring" and 
"June," from "Songs of the Fields," by Francis Ledwidge: 

To Mr. A. T. Stevens and The Flying Fame for "The Bull," by 
Ralph Hodgson: 

To Mr. Martin Seeker for "The Dying Patriot," from "The 
Golden Journey to Samarkand " by James Elroy Flecker: 

To The British Review for "The Song of the Full Catch," by Con- 
stance Lindsay Skinner: 

The thanks of the authors are due, also, to the distinguished poets 
who contributed to the chapter on "How Poems are Made," William 
Rose Benet, Padraic Colum, Sara Teasdale, Harriet Monroe and 
Edwin Markham: 

And thanks are due, also, to Mary Fanton Roberts, Editor of The 
Touchstmte,ior permission to reprint portions of articles that appeared 
for the first time in her magazine. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Reader's Approach to Contemporary Poetry i 

Jim Jay H 

PART I 

The Technique of Contemporary Poetry 

The Pattern of a Poem 17 

Patterns S3 

Renascence 3^ 

Indian Summer 4i 

The Dying Patriot 43 

Cinquains 44 

The Cedars 44 

Tampico 45 

Who Loves the Rain 45 

A Cyprian Woman: Greek Folk Song 45 

Psahn 46 

Deirdre 47 

An April Morning 4^ 

The Answer 4^ 

What Dim Arcadian Pastures 49 

Organic Rhythm 5° 

The Santa Fe Trail— A Humoresque 67 

Coming to Port 7i 

Monotone 7^ 

The Bombardment 72 

The Virgin's Slumber Song 75 

Seal Lullaby 76 

The Listeners 70 

Remembrance: Greek Folk Song 77 

The Bacchante to Her Babe 78 

The Most-Sacred Mountain 80 



xviii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Song of the Full Catch 8i 

Little Things 8i 

Images and Symbols 8^ 

Cargoes 96 

The Bull 97 

Sea Gods ir2 

Windmills 104 

Lincoln, the Man of the People 105 

Standards 106 

Pandora's Song 107 

A White Iris 107 

"Frost to-night" 108 

Silver 108 

From "Variations" 109 

An Old Woman of the Roads 109 

The Dark Cavalier no 

Said a Blade of Grass no 

Symbols in 

The Diction of Contemporary Poetry 112 

Her Words 131 

The Song of Wandering Aengus 132 

Grieve not for Beauty 133 

Old Age 133 

The End of the World 134 

The Old Bed 135 

Sunrise on Rydal Water 136 

Leaves 137 

Spring 138 

In the Poppy Field 138 

Mystery 139 

The Gum-Gatherer 139 

At Night (To W. M.) . . 141 

From " Variations" 141 

Daybreak 143 

Vistas 144 

Certain American Poets 144 

After Sunset 145 

Ships 146 



CONTENTS idx 

PAGE 

Certain Conservative Poets 149 

Song 159 

Forty Singing Seamen 1 59 

Ash Wednesday 163 

Around the Sun 168 

The Flight 170 

"My Lady Ne'er Hath Given Herself to Me" 171 

Path Flower 172 

Certain Radical Poets 175 

From "Night" 188 

Clay Hills 191 

Cool Tombs 192 

Loam 192 

Idealists 193 

Old Manuscript 193 

How Poems Are Made 194 

PART II 

The Spirit of Contemporary Poetry 

Democracy and the New Themes 211 

A Consecration 228 

The Leaden-Eyed 228 

Caliban in the Coal Mines 229 

The Common Street 229 

Cherry Way 230 

Broadway 231 

The Flower Factory 231 

The Time-Clock 232 

Night's Mardi Gras 233 

The Fugitives 234 

Roses in the Subway 234 

The Man with the Hoe 235 

"Scum o' the Earth" 237 

From "The New World" 239 

Patriotism and the Great War 242 

I. The Dead : • 253 

II. The Dead 253 



XX CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Dawn 254 

The Father 255 

Breakfast 255 

The Kiss 256 

Absolution 256 

The Assault Heroic 257 

Out of Trenches: The Barn, Twilight 258 

Nearer 259 

The Old Houses of Flanders 260 

"I Have a Rendezvous with Death" 261 

Draw the Sword, O Republic 262 

Down Fifth Avenue 263 

The Cornucopia of Red and Green Comfits 265 

Spring Sows Her Seeds 268 

Rouge Bouquet 269 

Love in Contemporary Poetry 272 

Calling-One's-Own 282 

Aladdin and the Jinn 282 

My Light with Yours 284 

"I Am in Love with High, Far-seeing Places" 284 

"There are Strange Shadows Fostered of the Moon" 285 

How Much of Godhood 285 

After Two Years 286 

Nirvana 286 

Perennial May 287 

"So Beautiful You Are Indeed " 287 

"I Sat among the Green Leaves" 288 

" Grandmither, think not I Forget" 288 

Frost in Spring 289 

Patrins 290 

Rain, Rain! 290 

Homage 290 

A Lynmouth Widow 291 

Love Is a Terrible Thing 292 

Love Song 292 

Love Came Back at Fall o' Dew 293 

Peace 293 

I Would Live in Your Love 294 



CONTENTS xxi 

PAGE 

The Lamp 294 

Maternity 294 

Motherhood 295 

Sacrifice 296 

The House and the Road 296 

My Mirror 297 

Religion in Contemporary Poetry 298 

Lord of My Heart's Elation 306 

The Falconer of God 307 

The Path of the Stars 308 

"God, You Have Been too Good to Me" 309 

Two Voices 309 

Invocation 310 

Trees 310 

Good Company 311 

Two Narratives from "Fruit-Gathering" 311 

The Birth 312 

A Christmas Folk-Song 313 

The Vigil of Joseph 313 

ChUd 314 

Comrade Jesus 314 

An Unbeliever 315 

The Jew to Jesus 316 

The Ballad of the Cross 317 

Nature in Contemporary Poetry 318 

Earth 328 

"The Wind Blew Words" 330 

Transformations 330 

Penetralia 331 

The Winds 332 

The Furrow and the Hearth 333 

Desire in Spring 334 

June 335 

"I Could not Sleep for Thinking of the Sky " 336 

A Day for Wandering 336 

The Sound of the Trees 337 

Epitaph 338 

Nature's Friend 339 



X3di CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Mountain Song 340 

Santa Barbara Beach 340 

In the Mohave 341 

The Last Days 342 

The Black Vulture 343 

On the Great Plateau 343 

The Morning Song of Senlin 344 

Canticle 346 

"All Vision Fades, but Splendor Does not Fail" 347 

Personality in Contemporary Poetry 348 

Martin 362 

Miss Loo 363 

An Old Man's Winter Night 364 

Richard Cory 365 

Miniver Cheevy 365 

Flammonde 366 

The Bird and the Tree 369 

Merchants from Cathay 371 

Isaiah Beethoven 373 

Anne Rutledge 374 

Lucinda Matlock 374 

Da Leetla Boy 375 

Children and Poetry 377 

The Child's Heritage 387 

Lyric from "The Land of Heart's Desire" 388 

Road-Song of the Bandar-Log 388 

Up a Hill and a Hill 389 

The Song of Conn the Fool 391 

Brown's Descent or the Willy-Nilly Slide 391 

The Broncho That Would not Be Broken 393 

Days Too Short 395 

The Rain 395 

Lepanto 396 

Index of Poems 404 

Index of Authors 407 



NEW VOICES 



NEW VOICES 

THE READER'S APPROACH TO CONTEMPORARY 

POETRY 

Long ago, in Jerusalem, was a pool called Bethesda. In our 
Bibles we find a quaint folk story of the life-giving power of this 
pool. From time to time an angel "troubled the waters," and 
then the sick and the infirm who went down first into the pool 
were healed of their infirmities. 

Poetry is like the Pool of Bethesda. Until they have been 
plunged into eddies of rhythmical and imaginative beauty, 
many human intellects are, to a certain extent, sick and infirm. 
And sometimes the waters of the pool seem to be still, so that 
we are not aware of the divine life laboring in the spirit of the 
race to create waves and ripples of sound and sense by which we 
may be refreshed and strengthened. Then, after such periods 
of rest, comes the inspiration of the genius or of the group of 
strong singers, and the waters are "troubled." Those who go 
first into this life-giving movement are regenerated and rejuven- 
ated by sharing the greatest joy of their own generation and its 
dynamic Hfe. But others, fearing that they will be accused of 
bad taste if they take an interest in work that may not "live," 
stand aside, awaiting the decisive judgment of critics and 
scholars. For such men and women, afraid of their own taste, 
the waters are never troubled; and, as a result of their procras- 
tination, their intellectual hauteur, they miss the invigorating 
gladness of hearing the greatest singers of their own period. 

Ten years ago, in this country, the waters were still. Many 
educated persons supposed that poetry had died an unnatural 
death with the passing of Tennyson. In spite of the fact that 



2 NEW VOICES 

our intellectual leaders allowed themselves to feel a restrained 
enthusiasm for the work of William Vaughn Moody, Bliss Car- 
man, and a few others, most of us were not greatly interested in 
contemporary poetry. Indigent and neglected persons, who 
lived on top of the top story, still wrote it. A few old fashioned 
people of blessed memory kept scrap-books, although they were 
a little bit ashamed of the laudable habit. But no influential 
organizations and specialized magazines were working for the 
advancement of poetry as an art. Pubhshers said that poetry 
could not be sold. We were told that the age of poetry was gone 
never to return and that, so far as this country was concerned, 
poetry would always be a dead art. 

But these were the words of false prophets, as time has proved. 
John Masefleld, England's greatest living poet of the people, 
visiting this country early in 1918, said that poetry as an art 
seemed to be very much alive among us. "America is making 
ready for the coming of a great poet," he said. "In England, 
in the days before Chaucer, many people were reading and writ- 
ing verse. Then he came. The same intense interest in poetry 
was shown again just before the coming of Shakespeare. And 
now, in this country, you are all writing poems or enjoying them. 
You are making ready for a master. A great poetic revival is in 
progress." 

Unprejudiced persons who have watched the trend of literary 
events for the past ten years and who share the aesthetic and 
intellectual impulses of our times, can hardly fail to agree with 
Mr. Masefield. To-day men and women from all classes, men 
and women of many temperaments, are reading poetry and 
talking about it. In many cases they have even lost that furtive 
and fortunate self-consciousness which used to save the tyro 
from the indiscretion of sharing his own perfervid effusions with 
his friends. Poets have persuaded the public that they are com- 
petent to talk about their own craft and to read their own poems. 
Pubhshers welcome new poets. Many poets have been dis- 
covered and have made substantial reputations in the past dec- 
ade. Of these the most notable are John Masefield and Rupert 



I 



CONTEMPORARY POETRY 3 

Brooke in England, Robert Frost, Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, 
Edgar Lee Masters and Sara Teasdale in the United States. 
Rabindranath Tagore, well known in India for his poetry in the 
Bengali language, was not known at all as a poet of the Enghsh 
tongue until the first of his English poems to appear in print 
were pubUshed in Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, soon after the 
founding of that famous little magazine. 

We all know that nothing grows where nothing has been 
planted. This is only another way of saying that great changes 
in the thought and emotion of a great people are not fortuitous. 
There have been three good and sufficient reasons for the strong 
and steady growth of popular interest in poetry in the past ten 
years. 

In the first place we American people are coming into our own 
aesthetic self-hood and consciousness. For several generations 
we were occupied with the conquest of the continent and the 
development of our material resources. This made necessary an 
extraordinary progress in the use of the practical intellect, but 
gave us little leisure for the enjoyment of beauty. For a long 
time after the colonial period our people were drilled for ef- 
ficiency in practical life. We worsliipped utility and morals. 
Most of us supposed that the arts were "handmaids" to ethics 
or philosophy or reform. But in the past decade we have out- 
grown the " handmaid " theory of art. We have come to beheve 
that Art is a real princess, to be loved for the sake of her beauty 
and served for the sake of life and mankind. We have rejoiced, 
as never before, in music. We have begun to dream dreams of 
*'the city beautiful" and of a distinctive national architecture. 
We have re-discovered the dance. We have re-discovered folk- 
lore and fairyland. We have begun to express ourselves, our 
pecuUar national consciousness, our times, our life, in patterns 
of beauty. 

Another reason for the growth of interest in poetry is to be 
found in the fact that a number of unselfish men and women 
have been working for poetry as for a cause. Critics, editors and 
professors, convinced of the importance of poetry as the word of 



4 NEW VOICES 

the people and the echo of the gods, have given themselves up 
to the work of winning attention and sympathy for poets. 

The first of these altruistic pioneers was Jessie B. Rittenhouse, 
who began working for poetry in Boston in 1900. When her 
"Younger American Poets" was published in 1904, Elsa Barker, 
a poet friend, wrote and congratulated her on being "all alone 
in a great green field." And from that time to this Miss Ritten- 
house has been working with unabated enthusiasm as an in- 
terpreter of the contemporary poet. She has written numerous 
tolerant and discriminating reviews, given many lectures before 
women's clubs and in universities, and. has made excellent an- 
thologies. "The Little Book of Modern American Verse" is a 
small and choice anthology from which no friend of contempor- 
ary poetry is willing to be separated for very long at a time. Miss 
Rittenhouse is generally considered conservative in taste, but it 
should be stated that she has been among the first to welcome 
the greatest of modern innovators, the most important poets 
who are bringing into American poetry a new spirit and new 
forms. Many young poets have cause to be grateful for her 
recognition. 

Another faithful worker for the cause of poetry is Edward J. 
Wheeler, for many years editor of Current Opinion, a magazine 
that has done much to introduce the work of new poets to the 
public. And in 1909 Mr. Wheeler and Miss Rittenhouse, aided 
and abetted by a number of poets in and near New York, founded 
The Poetry Society of America, the leading organization of poets 
and patrons of poetry in this country. To this society, which has 
grown very rapidly, nearly all poets of established reputation 
belong, and many young singers from all the states in the Union. 
The meetings are held once a month, during the winter season, 
in the beautiful old National Arts Club in Gramercy Park, New 
York. At these meetings poems submitted by members are 
read and polemically discussed. The society is known from coast 
to coast and the monthly bulletins furnish news of poets and 
poetry to all parts of the country. Smaller societies organized 
in universities and as departments of women's clubs are now 



I 



CONTEMPORARY POETRY 5 

affiliated with the parent organization and are working together 
for the advancement of poetry as an art. 

Still another pioneer who has helped to lead people out of the 
wilderness and into the old wonderland is William Stanley 
Braithwaite of The Boston Transcript, known from coast to 
coast as a compiler of anthologies. Every year Mr. Braith- 
waite selects from the magazines the poems which he considers 
^' poems of distinction" and classifies them, including in his 
annual anthology those he likes best. The first anthology was 
pubHshed in 1913, as the natural result of the making of an 
annual summary of poetic achievement for The Boston Trans- 
cript. But Mr. Braithwaite had been working in the good cause 
of poetry long before that. 

None of the workers for poetry in this country, however, has 
done more than Harriet Monroe, poet, critic, editor. She has 
done a thing unprecedented. She has given poets a place of 
their own where theories of craftsmanship may be discussed and 
where poems created in the new spirit and the new form of new 
times may be presented to an ever-increasing pubHc. Poetry, 
A Magazine of Verse, was the first of our *' poetry magazines" 
and it was founded in 191 2. To insure its continuance and 
to make it independent of advertisers. Miss Monroe collected 
an endowment fund which enabled her to carry the magazine 
safely and creditably through the first few years of its life. 
"Creditably" is not a strong enough adverb. It would be 
rather better to say "triumphantly." For Miss Monroe has 
achieved a genuine success and reigns in Chicago as "the 
autocrat of all the poetries." She "discovered" Sir Rabindra- 
nath Tagore. She made Vachel Lindsay famous. She was chief 
sponsor for Carl Sandburg. She contributed largely to the 
success of Edgar Lee Masters, who was "discovered " by William 
Marion Reedy, one of our ablest critics. As an editor. Miss 
Monroe has shown a rarely catholic taste. She has accepted 
and published free verse rhapsodies, polyphonic prose, classical 
sonnets and substantial blank verse. And few indeed are the 
poets of distinction in any school, in England or in this country, 



6 NEW VOICES 

who have not been contributors to Poetry, A Magazine of Verse. 
For this reason the httle room in Cass Street, Chicago, where the 
magazine is edited, has already possessed itself of an atmosphere 
of romance. 

Naturally enough Miss Monroe's experiment was imitated. 
Other "poetry magazines" were founded. Few, unfortunately, 
survive. Of these only one is widely known. That is Contem- 
porary Verse, published in Philadelphia and ably edited by 
Charles Wharton Stork. Mr. Stork is a conservative and less 
hospitable to poetic experiment than Miss Monroe. Therefore 
the poetry which appears in his magazine has won the praise of 
good conservative critics like William Dean Ho wells. A very 
large amount of good poetry is published in Contemporary Verse 
and the magazine deserves attention and interest. 

More recent arrivals in the field are The Lyric and Youth. 
The Lyric is the organ of The Lyric Society, an organization 
that works for the advancement of poetry and tries to make 
American poets better known to the American public. Samuel 
Roth is Editor of The Lyric. Youth has been founded and is 
edited by a group of young poets at Harvard University, 
assisted by corresponding editors in other parts of the world. 
Youth aims to be international in scope and interest. 

These editors and authors, faithful workers for the advance- 
ment of poetry, could have done little or nothing to interest 
readers, however, if poetry written by contemporary poets had 
been poor. By clever advertising a market man may secure 
purchasers for a stock of green peaches. But no amount of ad- 
vertising will lure purchasers again when they have been dis- 
appointed. And this brings us to a consideration of the third 
reason for the revival of interest in poetry, and it is by far the 
most important reason, — the fact that American poets are giving 
us more good poetry to-day than has ever been produced by 
American poets in any other period of our history. True, we 
have no Poe, no Whitman, no Lanier, no Emerson. We have 
no single colossal genius that we all recognize. But we have 
many strong, fine talents. And in this book I shall hope to 





r^'J- 



CHARLES WHARTON STORK 



CONTEMPORARY POETRY 7 

enable the reader to approach their work with confidence, 
understanding and sympathy. I should like to beHeve that 
this book will enable readers to find in poetry a new solace, rec- 
reation and inspiration, just the things which they might expect 
to find in music, or in a beautiful friendship. 

Unfortunately the approach to poetry is not always made 
easy for the reader. Every day in the year more false things 
than true are said about it. Poets are frequently misunderstood 
and misrepresented by creditable persons who are quite uncon- 
scious of their own polite mendacity. Superstitions flourish 
like weeds in a field or wild vines in a jungle. A dense clutter 
of nonsense, spurious scholarship, pedantry and fatuity must 
be cut away in the beautiful grove so that men and women may 
see the big trees. And because this thicket chokes the way 
many people who might otherwise come to know the full sweet- 
ness and power of poetry are held back from the enjoyment of it. 

The most common of these superstitions is the belief that 
poetry "just comes" to any one at any time, to society queen or 
labor leader, and that anyone to whom it ''just comes" can write 
it. We may know that children can learn to make music only 
by long hours of practice. We may realize that the painter 
must know how to use paint and brush and canvas before he 
can achieve a masterpiece. But it is commonly supposed that 
very little emotional or intellectual labor is involved in the mak- 
ing of a poem and that no discipHne is required for the maker. 
Poetry is sometimes thought to be a painless twihght sleep out 
of which beauty is accidentally born. 

But perhaps in all the universe there are no accidents. Per- 
haps the chain of cause and effect is hnked together in little 
things and in great things always. And perhaps that which 
seems to be accidental is really the result or fruition of causes 
that were the result of other causes. However that may be, 
biographies of great poets tell us of their labor and of their 
much practicing. The best poets of to-day labor as did their 
peers in days gone by. Robert Frost, to be sure, writes rapidly 
and seldom revises his successful poems. But for years he wrote 



8 NEW VOICES 

poems that served only as practice work and were never offered 
to the world. Witter Bynner worked for seven or eight years 
on ''The New World" before he gave it to the pubHc, and it was 
revised seventeen or eighteen times. Vachel Lindsay writes his 
social or choral poetry very slowly and is grateful for the criti- 
cism of his friends. He has rewritten some of his poems as many 
as forty or fifty times. The poet is truly what Lord Dunsany 
calls him, ''an artificer in ideas" and " the chief of workers." 

Moreover he is an artificer in rhythms and rh3mies and in the 
quahties and associations of words, a student of sound as com- 
bined with sense. The idea, the mood, which is the raw material 
of a poem, may " just come " to any person at any time. A poem 
may be born of a bit of color, a scent, a vague whim or impres- 
sion. But this raw material of poetry belongs to all men and 
women and, if it were the sum total of poetry, all poets would be 
as great as Shakespeare. But in order that this raw material 
may be made, or in order that it may grow into poems — ^per- 
fect and unalterable works of beauty — the artist-poet must 
cleanse it of all that is irrelevant and superfluous, must give it 
its own luster and completeness. In such measure as he is a 
true artist the poems will be strong, compelling, and even ap- 
parently artless, to many generations of readers. The poet pays 
the price of the reader's satisfaction. And the paying of that 
price is his privilege and joy. That is why only a few of us, 
those who give themselves up to their great task with devotion, 
can learn to make great poems. And I once heard Edwin Mark- 
ham say that poems which "just come" to the ordinary person 
out of the circumambient ether should usually be returned 
whence they came! 

But nearly all of us, all, surely, who are capable of warm, quick 
sympathy and who love beauty, can learn to understand a.nd feel 
poetry. Sympathy is the one personal quality without which 
no one can go far in the love and understanding of the arts, and 
with which anyone can go very far indeed. The inflexible soul 
will never be touched by the beauty of any masterpiece. With- 
out the capacity for sharing other people's moods, their love, 



CONTEMPORARY POETRY g 

joy, irony, rancor, sorrow and enthusiasm, their acrid dislikes 
and their reasons for laughter, their pleasure in color, texture, 
form, scent and movement, none of us can get much from 
poetry. For without this capacity none of us can get much out 
of Ufe. And poetry is simply the sharing of life in patterns of 
rhythmical words. But no person capable of sympathy and the 
love of beauty need be frightened away from poetry by the 
abracadabra of critics. For poetry is not, after all, an intricate 
puzzle game for sophisticated intellects. It is, hke music, like 
sculpture, a natural, joyous, life-sharing art, concerned with 
feelings that we all share and appeaHng to sympathies engen- 
dered and fostered by the imagination. 

Poetry is everybody's wonderland. It is for the business man, 
tired or rested, and for his wife. It is for rich employers (for 
the fortification of their souls!) and for poor employees (for the 
comfort of their hearts!). It is only required of us that we desire 
to perceive and enjoy and understand what is beautiful. 

But many persons erroneously suppose that they have found 
beauty when they have taken pleasure in what is merely pretty, 
and this is unfortunate, for it makes it necessary to differentiate 
between what is pretty and what is beautiful. Yet one might 
spend a whole day or many days at this labor, giving concrete 
illustrations, and still fail to show the lover of prettiness why he 
is not a lover of beauty. But the lover of beauty would know 
without explanation. Therefore it is necessary to say here only 
this — that to the lover of prettiness love is a little frosted cake, 
joy a luscious bonbon, sorrow a dose of bitter medicine. Pret- 
tiness is ephemeral. But beauty is powerful and memorable. 
Prettiness is external to us and has no more effect upon our Hves 
than a pebble thrown into a stream has upon the swirl of waters. 
But beauty changes us. The current of our lives runs swifter 
and clearer for it, perhaps, or deeper, or with a richer music. 
Prettiness is pleasant and negligible, a Hght coquette. But 
beauty is strong, profound, austere, a great maternal force. 
And those who desire what is pretty will seek out the Ughtest of 
literature. But those who desire beauty will find poetry. 



lo NEW VOICES 

If he really wishes to seek beauty in poetry, the greatest dif- 
ficulty for the new reader of contemporary verse will be found 
in the fact that it is not ''just hke" the poetry to which he has 
been accustomed. Many persons like the poetry of Tennyson 
and Longfellow, or of Swinburne and Keats, chiefly because 
they have been accustomed to it. A particular kind of poetry 
means poetry to them. They have taken it habitually and for 
granted as they have taken coffee for breakfast. And the best 
contemporary poetry is no more hke the poetry of Tennyson 
and Longfellow than the fragrance of nectar is like the fragrance 
of the matutinal coffee. The strange flavor of it is alarming at 
the first taste, and timorous persons, afraid of the new beauty, 
run away without taking enough of a taste to know what it 
really is like. 

To reassure such persons it is only necessary to say that what 
was good and beautiful in the work of Tennyson is as good and 
beautiful to-day as it ever was, but that it is not necessary, 
or desirable, for all poetry to be like Tennyson's in spirit and 
manner. They may have coffee for breakfast — and nectar also! 
And no modern poet worthy of the name would have it other- 
wise. For the best poetry of our times has grown out of the 
life of our times,which life, in turn, grew out of the life that pre- 
ceded it. And the love of the elder singers is the best preparation 
for the love of the younger choir, although the new choristers do 
not sing the same songs in just the same way. If contemporary 
poets were content to go on imitating their great predecessors, 
they would be frustrating all the natural processes of growth 
in life and art. They would be untrue to all great traditions, 
(to which ultra-conservatives would hold them too inflexibly). 
They would be making a plant of dead wax to mimic a living 
tree, instead of giving us a living, branching, blossoming 
reality, the inevitable result of life and growth. The poets of 
to-day are true to the memory of their great predecessors, not 
when they imitate them in thought and feeling and manner, 
halting beside the past that is gone and making graven images 
of it; but when, living fully in their own times, as well as in the 



CONTEMPORARY POETRY ii 

past and in the future, they make their craftsmanship conform 
to the hving spirit which is the significance of their work, carry- 
ing on the noble traditions of our thought and speech, and pro- 
ducing works remarkable for a new dignity, originaHty and 
power. If they lived to-day, the old masters would be the first 
to applaud such work. 

The reader, then, must expect a new kind of beauty in the 
technique and in the spirit of contemporary verse. In spite of 
all that ultra-conservatives may say and in spite of all that ultra- 
radicals may seem to demonstrate, there is a new poetry. It is 
not the poetry of those whose imaginations itch because they 
are bitten with a desire to describe trivial, petty, disagreeable 
experiences, moods and ideas in fines of uneven length, without 
rhjme, rhythm or design. Nor is it the poetry of those unim- 
portant imitators of preceding periods whose lyrics are dull- 
colored, too melHfluous, and sticky with sentimentaUty. It is, 
rather, the poetry of the great main body of the poets, of the 
EngHsh Georgians, John Masefield, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, 
Walter de la Mare, Gordon Bottomley, Ralph Hodgson, Rupert 
Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon. It is the poetry of Irishmen like 
James Stephens, Padraic Colum and William Butler Yeats. It 
is the poetry of Americans like Robert Frost, Vachel Lindsay, 
Amy Lowell, Arthur Davison Ficke, Witter Bynner, Sara Teas- 
dale, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Grace Hazard Conkling. 

In reading the work of these poets, who have held the in- 
terest of the laity and won both the praise and the censure of 
critics — sometimes equally valuable — the thoughtful person will 
notice that a few ideals of craftsm.anship seem to belong to all of 
them, differentiating their work from the work of the minor 
Victorians and their followers. For the reader's convenience 
it may be well to set down here, briefly, these ideals of poetry 
and of craftsmanship, which will be discussed at greater length 
in the pages that are to follow. 

Because poetry is an art, the contemporary poet believes that 
a poem must have a design or pattern worked out in thought 
and words. It must not be a mere haphazard collection of 



12 NEW VOICES 

thoughts and words. But the design may be worked out in any 
one of many ways and the designer must feel free to choose his 
own way. 

He beHeves, also, that rhythms must bear direct and constant 
relation to the meanings and emotions with which they are com- 
bined. They must not be used arbitrarily, for mere correctness 
is not the ideal. They must be used flexibly and fluently, as the 
perfectly fitting accompaniment of the sense of the poem. 

He believes that poetry differs from prose partly in being 
more concise. All ornament, therefore, must be structural, 
not super-added and superficial. Irrelevant words, phrases, 
sentences, must be cut out relentlessly no matter how good they 
may seem in and of themselves. And there must be no long- 
winded explanatory moralizing. Images and s3anbols that sug- 
gest meanings are to be preferred, as a rule, to crude statement. 
Everything said in a poem must contribute to its poignancy and 
power. 

The diction of the best contemporary poetry is the diction 
of the best contemporary speech, although narrative and dra- 
matic poetry must be true, of course, to the characters presented. 
All Uterary affectations, high-flown verbiage and conventional 
formulae are to be avoided. 

The contemporary poet demands absolute freedom in his 
choice of themes. He knows that his choice will be determined 
by the quality of his own personality. Anything which fires 
his spirit and engages his enthusiasm seems to him to be a fit 
subject for a poem. Anything which bores him seems to be a 
poor subject for him, no matter how many others have found 
it inspiring. He will write about a guttering candle, or about 
the Pleiades, at his pleasure. 

All good modern poetry is written to be read aloud. No one 
has ever read a good poem until he has read it aloud, with his 
own voice, for the pleasure of his own ears! 

Most of the poetry discussed and reprinted in this book has 
been published since the year nineteen-hundred. In cases where 



CONTEMPORARY POETRY 13 

poems appeared before that time and have been used as examples, 
it has been because they seemed to me to be strictly in accord 
with the spirit of the poetry of to-day and representative in an 
especially valuable way of qualities difficult to describe. Many 
good poets there are V\rho are not represented. I am sorry that 
I could not mention all. But perhaps some readers of this book 
will go on voyages of discovery and find these others with the 
added pleasure of surprise. 

For the rest — all critics disagree. I can say only that I have 
tried to treat all kinds of beauty with respect and to tell the truth 
as I understand it, without fear or favor, for the sake of poetry, 
for the sake of my readers. 

Let the reader who would learn to understand and enjoy con- 
temporary poetry say something like this to himseK: ''Life 
has its limitations. I must be what I am, one person with one 
person's experience. But if I will, I can have, through poetry, 
a share in the lives and adventures of others. I can travel on 
roads that my feet have never touched, visit in houses that I 
have never entered, share hopes and dreams and conquests that 
have never been mine. Poetry can be. for me, the fishing trip 
that I was never able to take, the great city that I have not seen, 
the great personalities that I have not met and fathomed, the 
banquets to which I have not been invited, the prizes that I did 
not win, the achievement that was a Httle beyond my reach. 
It can even be the love that I have not known. Through poetry 
I shall share the Hfe of my own times, of all times, I shall know 
the soul of all men and my own soul." If he approaches poetry 
in this way, simply, naturally, expectantly, the technique of 
contemporary poets — their way of weaving beauty with words — 
will trouble him very Httle. Sooner or later he will wander 
through the anthologies into Wonderland. 

But he must beware of the mild sheep in wolves' clothing who 
bleat at the moon that there is no contemporary poetry worth 
reading, who cry out against anything new in life or art, whose 
faith is in what is static, not in what is dynamic. They would 



14 NEW VOICES 

have To-day slumber beside Yesterday and then lead To-morrow 
to repose beside them both. Once they were many. Now they 
are very, very few. But Walter de la Mare has described the 
fate of such reactionary persons in a quaint little fable which I 
quote. 

JIM JAY 

Do diddle di do, 

Poor Jim Jay 
Got stuck fast 

In Yesterday. 
Squinting he was 

On cross-legs bent, 
Never heeding 

The wind was spent. 
Round veered the weathercock, 

The sun drew in — 
And stuck was Jim 

Like a rusty pin . . . 
We pulled and we pulled 

From seven till twelve, 
Jim, too frightened 

To help himself. 
But all in vain. 

The clock struck one, 
And there was Jim 

A little bit gone. 
At half-past five 

You scarce cculd see 
A glimpse of his flapping 

Handkerchee. 
And when came noon. 

And we climbed sky-high, 
Jim was a speck 

Slip-slipping by. 
Come to-morrow. 

The neighbors say, 
He'll be past crying for; 

Poor Jim Jay. 



PART I 
THE TECHNIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 

Not long ago a geologist made a collection of claystones found 
near a great river. They were marvellously designed in whorls 
and loops and medallions of clay that had once been plastic, 
not to the hands of man, but to the living fingers of water, heat, 
cold, pressure, and to the unnamed forces that began and have 
carried on the evolution of our earth. "They were lying there," 
said the geologist, "loose in a clay bank." And he added, "Is 
it not wonderful?" 

It is indeed wonderful. Why should a handful of clay, here 
and there in the great bank, gradually take to itself this form 
of beauty? Why should the great bank of clay show no such 
strongly marked and easily perceived design? Why does Nature 
give such perfect and perceptible designs to claystones, quartz 
crystals and butterflies, while she lets the small hillocks ramble 
at will across the surface of the land? Why does she spread the 
forests about in uneven patches upon the hills, cut jagged gashes 
chaotically through the august sides of mountains, and make 
no regular plan for the windings of rivers? In small things 
Nature seems to perfect her designs and to w^ork them out in 
strict symmetry. What is the law for great things? 

Great things, also, have a pattern or design. All mountains 
are clearly manifest to us as mountains. We can see that a 
river is a river, though rivers have many ways of winding. It 
is just possible that great things have a symmetry which we, 
potent to the extent of five and a half feet, or so, of flesh and 
blood, eyes the size of a robin's egg and brains that could be 
carried in salt sacks, are not well able to perceive. Perhaps 
Nature's larger designs are too large to seem symmetrical to 
us, who see them only in part. The far away worlds in space 
may be arranged in sequence, in a gigantic and balanced com- 

17 



i8 NEW VOICES 

position of which we know very, very Httle. This much is 
certain — in all the large things that we do know we find order 
and design as an expression of the primal genius, even though 
we do not find a syinmetry as strict as the symmetry of design 
in little things. And in every design variety pulls against sym- 
metry as love pulls against law, the dynamic against the static, 
life against death. 

Symmetry and variety, then, in the natural world, pull against 
each other and create order, design. When symmetry is sacri- 
ficed to variety there is bad design — failure. When a tree grows 
with all of its branches on one side, that tree is in peril ; a great 
wind after a heavy rain may blow it down. And again, when 
variety is sacrificed to symmetry we have bad design — failure. 
When no alien pollen is brought to fertilize the flower, the seed 
of a plant deteriorates. Self-fertilization causes the plant's 
strength to dwindle. But, always, when the forces that make 
for S3rmmetry are pulling hard against the forces that make for 
variety, so that a tension is created and an equilibrium main- 
tained between them, we have the design at its very best in the 
world where Dame Nature is artist. 

Now all of our human arts, to a certain degree, are subject 
to the same laws that govern nature. We human beings, Httle 
artists, possessed of some small share of the primal genius, have 
risen through many ranks of being and consciousness into that 
humanity of which we are inordinately proud. And when we are 
proud, it is often because we alone, of all living creatures, can 
consciously create patterns for our own pleasure. In all that 
we make for use, beauty and enduring life, we use patterns, 
good and bad. And in all patterns we find that the law of 
symmetry and the law of variety must be remembered. The 
penalty of forgetting either law is failure. Let us see how 
this appHes to poetry, and especially to the poetry of our own 
period. 

First of aU we must reahze that in all times when poems have 
been well made poets have made patterns for them; and these 
patterns have been of many kinds. The Psalms in our Bibles, 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 19 

those sublime lyrics of worship, were made in accordance with 
the Hebrew idea of design, a parallelism, or balancing of words 
and phrases, emotions and ideas, one against another. Take, for 
example, the first two verses of Psalm XXIX: 

Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty, give unto the Lord 

glory and strength. 
Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; 

worship the Lord in the beauty of HoUness. 

This parallehsm was the Hebrew way of providing for sym- 
metry in the design of a poem. Variety was subtly secured in 
symbol, cadence and diction. The Japanese, who think that 
we have too many words in our poems, have exalted symboHsm 
and made it the basic principle in the designs of their Httle poems 
in thirty-one or in seventeen syllables. 

But a very large part of the world's poetry has found its sym- 
metry of design in rhythm, and in most Enghsh poetry (by 
which I mean most poetry written in the English tongue) poets 
have added rhyme as a secondary symmetry, marking and de- 
fining rhythm. The variety of most of our poetry has been se- 
cured by the use of images and symbols, appropriate changes 
of cadence, extra syllables interpolated in a line that would other- 
wise be typical, to swing it momentarily from a too rigid sym- 
metry, that the reader may enjoy the return. Variety has also 
been secured by the use of contrasted phrases or meanings, by 
vowel echoes and in countless little ways that the cunning of 
craftsmen has provided for the pleasure of readers. But just 
because the poetry of our tongue has usually found its symmetry 
in rhythm and its variety in other ways, we must be the more 
careful to remember that not all poetry has been made in this 
way in all places and times. And he would be rash indeed who 
would maintain that the best poetry must always be of one kind, 
must always meet the requirements of one race, one language 
and one artistic credo. When our poets, after studying the 
craftsmanship of other lands and times, try to introduce 
into our Uterature new ways of designing, it should be our 



20 NEW VOICES 

joy to read, understand, evaluate and encourage their at- 
tempts. 

One more fact should be noted before we discuss in detail 
the kinds of patterns that are being made by poets of to-day. 
That is the matter of the effect of the length of the poem upon 
the design. Just as in nature the pattern seems to be more 
clearly defined and more symmetrical in small things than in 
large, so, in the poetry that has lived, short poems seem to be 
more strictly symmetrical than long poems; long poems seem to 
be more varied in design than short poems. A short poem is like 
a claystone in the river bank. A long poem is Uke the river. 

We can make only one generaUzation with reference to the 
designs of contemporary poetry. And that is that the present 
tendency is toward a great freedom and variety in composition. 
This is a healthy thing, in the main, and a sign of power. In the 
Elizabethan period the same thing was true. The sonnet and 
other foreign forms had been introduced into Enghsh poetry 
and all good poets were experimenting with them. They were 
inventing forms and devices of their own. They were playing 
with rhythms and rhymes and symbols for the sheer joy of it, 
in the true craftsman's way. They were not trying to achieve a 
correct formality. They were, rather, audacious and joyful in 
their search for ways of making their poems vivid, fresh, color- 
ful, strong. And they succeeded so well, and so often, that if we 
had no other Enghsh poetry at all but that which belongs to the 
Elizabethan period, our heritage would be rich beyond the power 
of words to tell. Therefore, when we say that the poets of to- 
day are seeking variety in their craft as the Ehzabethans sought 
it, we say that they have a spiritual vitality like that of their 
great predecessors. 

But unlike the best of the Elizabethan poets, many of those 
who call themselves poets in our day seem to have forgotten the 
importance of structural symmetry. In so far as that is true 
their achievement is poor. Their poetry, unfortunately, some- 
times teeters and topples like a chair that has lost one leg. This 
disregard of symmetry in design is probably a reaction against 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 21 

the stringent S5nnmetry, the tiresome and insistent symmetry of 
the work of minor poets in the periods immediately preceding 
our own. Just as some 'of the minor Victorians supposed that 
they might neatly enclose the thought of the world in a nice Httle 
yard surrounded by a fence of dogma, so the forms into which 
they cast their poetry often seem to us, of a later generation, to 
be so strictly confined that they lack life and vigor. They are 
smothered in form. And those who remember with pain the 
wearisome monotony of rhythm in certain poems duly and dully 
scanned, dissected and detested in the school rooms of a passing 
generation, have accepted with relief, if not with unqualified 
approval and gratitude, a certain amount of wild and unsym- 
metrical verse. 

Another reason for our renewed love of variety in design is to 
be found in our renewed beUef that all themes are themes for 
poems, when genius kindles to them. For the design of a poem 
must be of one quality with the theme and spirit of it. Certain 
things can be said best in sonnets, if a great poet feels them as he 
feels a sonnet. Certain other things can be said best in heroic 
rhythms, like the sonorous hexameter of the Iliad. Certain other 
things can be said best in free, rhapsodic cadences. A large, 
rough pattern may be essential to sincerity in a poem which uses 
a large, rough emotion or idea. It is for the poet to determine 
how the design shall conform to and give form to the meaning 
and emotion which he would convey. And it is only natural 
that a period in which poets are striving eagerly and devoutly 
for a realization of many new phases of human life and thought, 
a period in which even one man's personal experiences may be 
greater and broader than many men's personal experiences in 
mediaeval times, should be, also, a period of new forms in verse, 
of new crystalizations of beauty and of new ways of refracting 
the rays of life through the medium of personality. 

The poets of to-day are showing their love of variety in many 
ways. Some of them keep the traditional patterns that have been 
used for many generations in our poetry, but use these patterns 
less sedately, with a freedom that satisfies the modern love of 



22 NEW VOICES 

variety. Others refuse to use the typical and traditional pat- 
terns and make somewhat less symmetrical patterns of their 
own, keeping to rhythm, however, as the basic element in poetry, 
the structural S3anmetry of their verse. Still others seem to be 
trying to make poems in a way quite new in our language, using 
not rhythm, but imagery, symboHsm or parallelism to secure 
symmetry, and letting their rhythms be varied almost as much 
as rhythms are varied in prose. These last often seem to be 
carrying the quest for variety a little too far afield. Neverthe- 
less it sometimes happens that their work has great beauty and 
value. 

Of all the poets who use the old fashioned designs, infusing new 
life into them, none is more interesting to study than Arthur 
Davison Ficke. For he has written an admirable sonnet se- 
quence, ''The Sonnets of a Portrait Painter," and wiseacres often 
tell us that "a sonnet is a sonnet" — which sounds reasonable 
enough to be the truth — and that one sonnet differs from another 
only in glory, or in type — classical or Shakespearian. But no one 
with ears sensitive to delicate variations in sound can read 
Mr. Ficke 's sonnets without feehng that they differ subtly from 
sonnets of the elder singers. This differentiation is due, in part, 
to Mr. Ficke's own individuality and the flux of it in his poems. 
But it is also due, in part, to his modernity. The felicitous use 
of many feminine rhymes, the syllables made to move more 
rapidly than EngHsh syllables used to move in the lines of son- 
nets, the pauses that halt the lines more frequently — these are 
shy graces more easily felt than enumerated. The student who 
wishes to make comparisons should compare Mr. Ficke's son- 
nets with the sonnets of Longfellow, carefully noting the dif- 
ferences in sound which separate the one poet's work from the 
work of the other. 

Of the poets who make rhythm contribute the structural 
symmetry of most of their work, but who try to make patterns 
of a new kind. Amy Lowell is a good example. A study of her 
poem, "Patterns," will richly reward the reader who is interested 
in this question of design. 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 



23 



"I walk down the garden paths, 

And all the daffodils 

Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. 

I walk down the patterned garden paths 

In my stiff brocaded gown. 

With my powdered hair and jewelled fan, 

I too am a rare 

Pattern. As I wander down 

The garden paths. 

" My dress is richly figured, 
And the train 

Makes a pink and silver stain 
On the gravel, and the thrift 
Of the borders. 

Just a plate of current fashion, 
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes. 
Not a softness anywhere about me, 
Only whalebone and brocade. 
And I sink on a seat in the shade 
Of a lime tree. For my passion 
Wars against the stiff brocade. 
The daffodils and squills 
Flutter in the breeze 
As they please. 
And I weep; 

For the hme tree is in blossom 
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom." 

These are the two first strophes of the poem. And here is the 
last strophe: 

"In Summer and in Winter I shall walk 

Up and down 

The patterned garden paths 

In my stiff brocaded gown. 

The squills and daffodils 

Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow. 

I shall go 

Up and down 

In my gown, 



24 NEW VOICES 

Gorgeously arrayed, 

Boned and stayed. 

And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace 

By each button, hook and lace. 

For the man who should loose me is dead, 

Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, 

In a pattern called war. 

Christ! What are patterns for?" 

This poem is designed in cadences, and in spite of its great 
variety, the symmetry is to be found, first of all, in the repeti- 
tion, at more or less regular intervals, of the typical or pattern 
cadence of the poem, — "In my stiff brocaded gown." (It is 
the cadence that is repeated — not the words). The cadence is 
reiterated in lines like the following: 

"Makes a pink and silver stain" 
"Only whalebone and brocade" 
"Underneath my stiffened gown" 
"But she guesses he is near" 
"With the weight of this brocade" 
"By each button, hook and lace" 
"Aching, melting, unafraid " 

In other lines we find this cadence varied just a little bit. 
Perhaps an accent will be changed, perhaps a word with two 
short-sounding syllables will be substituted for a word with one 
long-sounding syllable, thus giving the line a new effect with the 
same time value as the typical cadence. (For there is certainly 
such a thing as quantity in English poetry, and the greatest 
poets have felt it and used their knowledge of it, although they 
have not argued about it overmuch.) Such slightly varied lines 
are like the following: 

"Just a plate of current fashion" 
"And the sliding of the water" 
"Bewildered by my laughter" 
"Underneath the fallen blossoms" 
"Fighting with the Duke in Flanders" 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 25 

Still other lines are simply combinations of the typical ca- 
dence with another line differing from it slightly, the two lines, 
taken together as one line, making a Hne with double the time 
value of the typical cadence. These still contribute to symmetry. 

"I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths" 
"It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke" 
"The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun" 
"Will give place to pillared roses and to asters and to snow" 

And still other lines, hke the frequently repeated "Up and 
down," seem to be part of the symmetry because they are like 
a part of the typical cadence, suggesting a pause and the rest of 
it. 

But just as most of the lines of this poem seem to contribute 
to symmetry by reiterating the same or similar cadences, so 
many of them repeat only a part of the typical cadence, and then 
alter it, lengthen it, shorten it, or emphasize and accent it in 
new ways. This, evidently, gratifies Miss Lowell's love of 
rhythmical variety. And she has so very cunningly devised 
this poem that the proportion existing between typical and 
atypical Hues is both tantalizing and pleasurable. The varied 
cadences never delay the current of the rhythm too long, but 
rather, reHeve and rest us, so that, when the poem swings back 
into the familiar cadence, we know an instantaneous delight. 

We should notice, also, that Miss Lowell has not been con- 
tent with rhythm alone as the structural symmetry of her design. 
She has reinforced rhythm in several ways. The whole poem 
plays with the idea of the pattern. Brocade, a silk with a showy 
design, is mentioned seven times in the poem. The word ''pat- 
tern," perhaps, is used too often. The word "stiff" is also re- 
iterated, probably to give the picture of the lady its proper 
lineal effect. A double color design runs through the poem 
from end to end — the pink and silver of the woman and her 
gown, the blue and gold of daffodils and squills, of water and 
sunlight. 

For all these reasons, this poem, a narrative of the eighteenth 



26 NEW VOICES 

century told in the first person, is an unusual opportunity to 
take pleasure in design. Readers may ask themselves whether 
Miss Lowell could wisely have introduced as many lines, pro- 
portionately, varying from the typical, in a poem of half the 
length of this, or whether in a poem several times as long the 
reiteration of cadence and idea which gives "Patterns" its very 
real charm would have become tiresome. 

Other fine examples of design which keeps to rhythm as the 
structural symmetry of poetry are Adelaide Crapsey's brilliant 
and beautiful Httle poems called "Cinquains." No one else 
has ever made five-fine poems like them. But Miss Crapsey 
made quite a number of them and made them perfectly, and the 
fact that she is no longer living — an exquisitely original spirit 
lost to us — ^is a cause of grief to poets and readers. In these 
Httle poems the symbols, always true and adequate, bear the 
full weight of the meaning and the rhythms give a rare sense of 
growth and climax. In each case the pattern conforms beauti- 
fully to the meaning which it accompanies. Here is one of 
them, " The Warning." 

*' Just now, 
Out of the strange 

Still dusk ... as strange, as still . . . 
A white moth flew. Why am I grown 
So cold? " 

As has already been said, many poets of to-day have at- 
tempted to make verse with a symmetry of design not depen- 
dent upon rhythm, allowing the rhythm to be the variable ele- 
ment in the composition. But only a few of these poets have suc- 
ceeded in giving us memorable poems. One, which is seldom 
mentioned and which is by a poet not well known to the general 
public, is "Psalm" by Jessie E. Sampter. It was printed in 
"The Lyric Year," an anthology made as the result of a prize 
competition in 1912. The symmetry of design in this poem 
depends upon the principle of parallelism, in accordance with 
which* the Psalms of the Bible were made. It is one of very 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 



27 



few modern "psalms" that are psalms in any real and formal 
sense. The symmetry of design is further strengthened by the 
use of one S3anbol, the symbol of light, throughout the poem. 

"They have burned to Thee many tapers in many temples: 
I burn to Thee the taper of my heart." 

Not very remote from this psalm in spirit and in structure 
are a number of poems by poets of the far East who are now writ- 
ing in our language. Kahlil Gibran is writing poems and par- 
ables that have an individual music, a naive charm and distinc- 
tion and a structural symmetry based on symbol, contrast, 
repetition and paralleHsm. The poems of Sir Rabindranath 
Tagore need no introduction to American readers. They are 
like frail crystal cups filled with the clear waters of meditation. 
Unfortunately the fact that many of them are so strongly sym- 
bolic as to seem mystical here in the Occident has led a few 
readers to think of Sir Rabindranath as a "savior" or world 
hero or major prophet. It is probable that the future will show 
all what the present seems to show the best critics, that he is a 
Bengali gentleman and a poet of rare achievement. The fol- 
lowing poem taken from "Gitanjali" is one of many that find 
their S3mimetry, in so far as they have symmetrical structure 
in our tongue, in symbol and story, not in rhythm. 

"On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, 
and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained 
unheeded. 

Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from 
my dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south 
wind. 

That vague fragrance made my heart ache with longing, and it 
seemed to me that it was the eager breath of the summer seeking for 
its completion. 

I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and this 
perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart." 

The rhythms of these verses are similar, but the stresses 
hardly recur regularly enough to create a symmetry in rhythm. 



28 NEW VOICES 

The same thing may be said of John Gould Fletcher's poem 
on Lincoln. The first division of it is a complete poem in itself. 
It tells the story of Lincoln's life in terms of the hfe of the pine 
tree. And although the rhythms are similar, the several Hues 
of the three strophes are unified and held together rather more 
by symbol than by the regular recurrence of stress in the flowing 
of the rhythm. 

"Like a gaunt, scraggly pine 

Which lifts its head above the mournful sandhills; 
And patientl}^ through dull years of bitter silence, 
Untended and uncared for, starts to grow. 

"Ungainly, laboring, huge. 

The wind of the north has twisted and gnarled its branches; 

Yet in the heat of midsummer days, when thunder-clouds ring the 

horizon, 
A nation of men shall rest beneath its shade. 

"And it shall protect them all. 
Hold everyone safe there, watching aloof in silence; 
Until at last one mad stray bolt from the zenith 
Shall strike it in an instant down to earth." 

In this connection it is interesting to call to mind the fact that 
Walt Whitman's great threnody, ''When Lilacs Last in the Door- 
yard Bloomed," would have had almost no S3anmetry of design 
if he had not tied the threads of meaning together by his fre- 
quently reiterated mention of lilac, star, and hermit thrush. And 
it is interesting to note, further, that lovers of Walt Whitman 
value his long poems most, and value them for the breadth of 
vision that is in them and for the towering spirit of democracy, 
rather than for the beauty of his craftsmanship, although even 
judged as a craftsman. Whitman had certain shining powers. 
But the only short poem of his which is well known is "O Cap- 
tain, My Captain!" which has a symmetry of design based on 
rhythm and rhyme. 

And now we are brought face to face with the question of the 
real importance of rhyme in the designing of poems. What does 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 



29 



rhyme add to poetry and how should it be used? The contem- 
porary poets have answered that question in several ways. The 
extreme conservatives hold that rhyme should be used in all 
EngUsh poems not written in blank verse. The extremists of 
the radical schools claim that rhyme is an old and worn-out de- 
vice and that, because the number of possible rhymes is strictly 
limited, and because we have heard most of them many times,, 
contemporary poetry is best written without rhymes. But the 
moderates, the greatest hving poets, those recognized both by 
critics and by the public, use rhyme in a large part of their work, 
and this fact leads us naturally enough to beheve that they con- 
sider it beautiful and valuable. The fact that they write some 
unrhymed poems leads us to believe that they think it not in- 
dispensable. Tennyson — a rather conservative poet — wrote one 
of his finest lyrics without rhyme, the famous "Tears, Idle 
Tears;" and many lyrics by contemporary poets are fluent 
enough and maintain their symmetry well enough to be memor- 
able without it. One of these is "Deirdre," by James Stephens, 
which begins in this fashion: 

"Do not let any woman read this verse; 
It is for men, and after them their sons 
And their sons' sons. 

"The time comes when our hearts sink utterly; 
When we remember Deirdre and her tale, 
And that her lips are dust." 

Such poems show what may be done without rhyme and many 
others show how beautiful rhyming may be. Only the extrem- 
ists of conservative or radical theory have lost this traditional 
sanity with regard to the use of rhyme, the conservatives saying, 
in effect, "We have grown accustomed to it; therefore we must 
have it;" the radicals saying, in effect, "We have grown ac- 
customed to it; therefore we had better do without it!" 

What purpose does rhyme serve in a poem? That is the ques- 
tion which students of poetry must answer. First of all, we 



30 NEW VOICES 

may say, it serves to define the rhythm by grouping together 
certain cadences and marking the pause that comes after them. 
Rhyme, most commonly, is used in this way, and this way of 
using it is generally understood. Such rhyming serves the same 
purpose in poetry that a picture frame serves with a picture. 
It contributes to the symmetry of the poetic pattern by marking 
the place where the rhythm stops. 

Contemporary poets use rhymes of this sort very much as 
poets always have used them, but with a new scrupulousness 
with regard to sound values. They realize that the constant 
use of rhyme in EngHsh poetry has increased our sensitivity. 
Many rhymes which pleased earher generations — such rhymes 
as "Hfe," "strife," "love," "dove," and the like, have been used 
so frequently that they have become trite and tiresome. Many 
of the "rich rhymes," moreover, rhymes like "again," "pain," 
"home," "come," " gone," " won," are less pleasing to modem 
poets and to their readers than they were to our forefathers. 
The best contemporary poets avoid these "rich rhymes," 
really imperfect rhymes, whenever they would have to be 
placed in such close proximity as would make the imperfection 
conspicuous and distract the reader with the desire to mispro- 
nounce. Rhymes should be inconspicuously correct or beautiful 
enough for enjoyment. Contemporary poets prefer to use per- 
fect rhymes. And because rhyming is usually a part of the 
structural s)mimetry in the designs of short poems, poets are 
careful to avoid flaws in the rhyming of short lyrics. 

A poem which is an excellent example of good rhyming in a 
short lyric is Margaret Widdemer's "Greek Folk Song" from 
which the following lines are taken: 

"Under dusky laurel leaf, 

Scarlet leaf of rose, 
I lie prone, who have known 

All a woman knows." 

In the third line of this stanza the reader will notice that a 
word at the end of the line rhymes with a word within the line — ■ 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 



31 



''prone," ''known." Clever poets can do much to create a 
structural symmetry by the clever use of this internal rh5aning. 
Moreover it makes a poem easier to remember. And if such 
rhymes are well chosen, they bring into a poem a music that is 
like the reiterated sound of a bell. Of course, the use of such 
rh^mies is beset with perils, the chief of these being the peril of 
apparent artificiality. But, to the clever craftsman, internal 
rhyming affords an opportunity for the perfecting of fine pat- 
terns. 

One of the cleverest American poems in which internal rhym- 
ing is used is "The Song" from " Juanita" by Lauren E. Crane, 
one of the pioneer poets of Cahfornia. Only two or three lines 
of it seem in any way artificial, in spite of the fact that the long 
lines in each stanza are rhymed three or four times each. " The 
Song " maintains, in most of its lines, a feeling of spontaneous 
suicerity which always belongs to good lyrics. Here is one stanza 
— the first: 

"To-night the stars are flowing gold; 
The light South wind is blowing cold, 

Esta cs, mi lucha? 
The bright, bent moon is growing old, 

Escuchal" 

This poem, however, was written about fifty years ago. It is 
interesting to compare it with recent poetry in which internal 
rhyming is used. For the sake of contrast let us read a few hues 
from Amy Lowell's "The Cross-Roads," a poem written in 
what Miss Lowell calls "polyphonic prose." The rh3miing in 
this passage is much needed as a contribution to the symmetry 
of the design. 

"The stake has wrenched, the stake has started, the body, 
flesh from flesh has parted. But the bones hold tight, socket and 
ball, and clamping them down in the hard, black ground is the 
stake, wedged through ribs and spine. The bones may twist, 
and heave, and twine, but the stake holds them still in fine. 
The breeze goes down, and the round stars shine, for the stake 
holds the fleshless bones in line." 



2,2 NEW VOICES 

Perhaps the rhyming also hurries these grewsome Hnes a Httle 
and contributes something to our sense of excitement. 

Rhyme, after all, like rhythm and imagery and s3nTibolism, 
is something which contributes to the strength and beauty of a 
poem — if it be used by a genius. That is the most and the least 
that can be said about it. Rhyme is almost always a contribu- 
tion to S3mimetry of design and therefore it is usually more im- 
portant and valuable in short poems than in long poems. It 
belongs to the free and nonchalant ballad and to brief lyrics. 
It is not an essential in tlie making of dramatic poems and long 
narratives. Like rhythm and imagery, rhyme can be used in- 
sincerely and inappropriately. When this has been the case the 
lines will jingle in vain. Posterity will never hear them. But 
posterity will return, again and again, to a psalm, or a poem in 
blank verse, nobly conceived and sincerely written. However, 
when rhyme is well used, it is beautiful and has genuine mne- 
monic value. It may enable men to remember what might 
otherwise be forgotten. 

After all, what makes a poem live? The answer is both simple 
and complex. One may say, quickly and thoughtlessly, "The 
beauty and truth that are in it." And this will be a true answer. 
But this answer becomes less simply sufificient when we go on to 
explain that beauty and truth in a poem are the result of beauty 
and truth in a human spirit, combined with and expressed by 
such excellent craftsmanship as can present the beauty and truth 
to other human beings impressively and memorably. Then, 
when we have used that word, "memorably," we have explained 
the vital importance of design. 

We all know how much easier it is to remember a poem that 
has a decided pattern in rhyme, rhythm, thought, imagery or 
symbol, than it is to remember a poem which flows on inco- 
herently from one thought or emotion to the next. In spite 
of all that dilettantes of the "saffron schools" may tell us, 
poems that live, live because they are so well designed that they 
can hardly be forgotten. A well known American poet says that 
he can test the value of his own work by its mnemonic quality. 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 33 

When he can remember a poem that he has written he usually 
finds that the poem is remembered and enjoyed by many other 
people. His weaker poems fade rapidly out of his own mind. 

Beautiful sentiments and ideas taken alone, or grouped to- 
gether without clearly defined order, may win a hearing for a 
poem and give it a temporary value in the generation to which 
it belongs. But a poem will live only because its parts are held 
together and unified in a symmetrical pattern and because 
variety is a dynamic force moving in it from line to line. When- 
ever this is true, Httle poems are as perfect as claystones found 
in a river bank and long poems have the sinuous beauty of 
streams. 

PATTERNS 

I walk down the garden paths, 

And all the daffodils 

Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. 

I walk down the patterned garden paths 

In my stiff, brocaded gown. 

With my pov/dered hair and jewelled fan, 

I too am a rare 

Pattern. As I wander down 

The garden paths. 

My dress is richly figured, 

And the train 

Makes a pink and silver stain 

On the gravel, and the thrift 

Of the borders. 

Just a plate of current fashion. 

Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes. 

Not a softness anywhere about me, 

Only whalebone and brocade. 

And I sink on a seat in the shade 

Of a lime tree. For my passion 

Wars against the stiff brocade. 

The daffodils and squills 

Flutter in the breeze 

As they please. 



34 NEW VOICES 

And I weep; 

For the lime tree is in blossom 

And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom. 

And the plashing of waterdrops 

In the marble fountain 

Comes down the garden paths. 

The dripping never stops. 

Underneath my stiffened gown 

Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin, 

A basin in the midst of hedges grown 

So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding, 

But she guesses he is near. 

And the sliding of the water 

Seems the stroking of a dear 

Hand upon her. 

What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown! 

I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground. 

AU the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground. 

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths, 

And he would stumble after, 

Bewildered by my laughter. 

I should see the sun flashing from his sword hilt and the buckles on 

his shoes. 
I would choose 

To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths, 
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover. 
Till he caught me in the shade. 

And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me. 
Aching, melting, unafraid. 

With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops, 
And the plopping of the waterdrops, 
All about us in the open afternoon — 
I am very like to swoon 
With the weight of this brocade. 
For the sun sifts through the shade. 

Underneath the fallen blossom 

In my bosom. 

Is a letter I have hid. 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 35 

It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke. 

"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell 

Died in action Thursday se'nnight." 

As I read it in the white, morning sunlight, 

The letters squirmed like snakes. 

"Any answer. Madam?" said my footman. 

"No," I told him. 

"See that the messenger takes some refreshment. 

No, no answer." 

And I walked into the garden. 

Up and down the patterned paths, 

In my stiff, correct brocade. 

The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun, 

Each one. 

I stood upright too, 

Held rigid to the pattern 

By the stiffness of my gown. 

Up and down I walked. 

Up and down. 

In a month he would have been my husband. 

In a month, here, underneath this lime, 

We would have broke the pattern; 

He for me, and I for him. 

He as Colonel, I as Lady, 

On this shady seat. 

He had a whim 

That sunlight carried blessing. 

And I answered, "It shall be as you have said." 

Now he is dead. 

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk 

Up and down 

The patterned garden paths 

In my stiff, brocaded gown. 

The squills and daffodils 

Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow. 

I shall go 

Up and down, 

In my gown. 

Gorgeously arrayed, 



36 NEW VOICES 

Boned and stayed. 

And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace 

By each button, hook, and lace. 

For the man who should loose me is dead, 

Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, 

In a pattern called a war. 

Christ! What are patterns for? 

A my Lowell 

RENASCENCE* 

All I could see from where I stood 
Was three long mountains and a wood ; 
I turned and looked another way, 
And saw three islands in a bay. 
So with my eyes I traced the line 
Of the horizon, thin and fine, 
Straight around till I was come 
Back to where I'd started from; 
And all I saw from where I stood 
Was three long mountains and a wood. 
Over these things I could not see; 
These were the things that bounded me; 
And I could touch them with my hand. 
Almost, I thought, from where I stand. 
And all at once things seemed so small 
My breath came short, and scarce at all. 
But, sure, the sky is big, I said; 
Miles and miles above my head; 
So here upon my back I'll lie 
And look my fill into the sky. 
And so I looked, and, after all. 
The sky was not so very tall. 
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop. 
And — sure enough! — I see the top! 
The sky, I thought, is not so grand; 
I 'most could touch it with my hand! 
And, reaching up my hand to try, 
I screamed to feel it touch the sky. 

*This poem is reprinted by special permission of Mitchell Kennerley, publisher of the 
volume Renascence and Other Poems from which it is taken. 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 37 

I screamed, and — lo! — Infinity 

Came down and settled over me; 

Forced back my scream into my chest, 

Bent back my arm upon my breast, 

And, pressing of the Undefined 

The definition on my mind. 

Held up before my eyes a glass 

Through which my shrinking sight did pass 

Until it seemed I must behold 

Immensity made manifold ; 

Whispered to me a word whose sound 

Deafened the air for worlds around, 

And brought unmuffled to my ears 

The gossiping of friendly spheres, 

The creaking of the tented sky. 

The ticking of Eternity. 

I saw and heard, and knew at last 

The How and Why of all things, past. 

The present, and forevermore. 

The Universe, cleft to the core, 

Lay open to my throbbing sense 

That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence 

But could not, — nay! But needs must suck 

At the gi-eat wound, and could not pluck 

My lips away till I had drawn 

All venom out. — Ah, fearful pawn! 

For my omniscience paid I toll 

In infinite remorse of soul. 

All sin was of my sinning, all 

Atoning mine, and mine the gall 

Of all regret. Mine was the weight 

Of every brooded wrong, the hate 

That stood behind each envious thrust. 

Mine every greed, mine every lust. 

And all the while for every grief, 

Each suffering, I craved relief 

With individual desire, — 

Craved all in vain ! And felt fierce fire 

About a thousand people crawl; 

Perished with each, — then mourned for all! 



38 NEW VOICES 

A man was starving in Capri; 

He moved his eyes and looked at me; 

I felt his gaze, I heard his moan, 

And knew his hunger as my own. 

I saw at sea a great fog-bank 

Between two ships that struck and sank; 

A thousand screams the heavens smote; 

And every scream tore through my throat. 

No hurt I did not feel, no death 

That was not mine; mine each last breath 

That, crying, met an answering cry 

From the compassion that was I. 

All suffering mine, and mine its rod; 

Mine, pity like the pity of God. 

Ah, awful weight! Infinity 

Pressed down upon the finite me! 

My anguished spirit, like a bird, 

Beating against my lips I heard; 

Yet lay the weight so close about 

There was no room for it without. 

And so beneath the weight lay I 

And suffered death, but could not die. 

Long had I lain thus, craving death, 
When quietly the earth beneath 
Gave way, and inch by inch, so great 
At last had grown the crushing weight, 
Into the earth I sank till I 
Full six feet under ground did lie. 
And sank no more, — there is no weight 
Can follow here, however great. 
From off my breast I felt it roll. 
And as it went my tortured soul 
Burst forth and fled in such a gust 
That all about me swirled the dust. 

Deep in the earth I rested now; 
Cool is its hand upon the brow 
And soft its breast beneath the head 
Of one who is so gladly dead. 
And all at once, and over all 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 

The pitying rain began to fall; 

I lay and heard each pattering hoof 

Upon my lowly, thatched roof, 

And seemed to love the sound far more 

Than ever I had done before. 

For rain it hath a friendly sound 

To one who's six feet under ground; 

And scarce the friendly voice or face: 

A grave is such a quiet place. 

The rain, I said, is kind to come 
And speak to me in my new home. 
I would I were alive again 
To kiss the fingers of the rain, 
To drink into my eyes the shine 
Of every slanting silver line, 
To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze 
From drenched and dripping apple trees. 
For soon the shower will be done, 
And then the broad face of the sun 
Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth 
Until the world with answering mirth 
Shakes joyously, and each round drop 
Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top. 
How can I bear it ; buried here, 
While overhead the sky grov/s clear 
And blue again after the storm? 
O, multi-colored, multi-form, 
Beloved beauty over me. 
That I shall never, never see 
Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold, 
That I shall nevermore behold! 
Sleeping your myriad magics through, 
Close-sepulchred away from you! 
O God, I cried, give me new birth, 
And put me back upon the earth! 
Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd 
And let the heavy rain, down-poured 
In one big torrent, set me free. 
Washing my grave away from me! 



39 



40 NEW VOICES 

I ceased; and, through the breathless hush 

That answered me, the far-oil rush 

Of herald wings came whispering 

Like music down the vibrant string 

Of my ascending prayer, and — crash! 

Before the wild wind's wdiistling lash 

The startled storm-clouds reared on high 

And plunged in terror down the sky, 

And the big rain in one black wave 

Fell from the sky and struck my grave. 

I know not how such things can be 

I only know there came to me 

A fragrance such as never clings 

To aught save happy, living things; 

A sound as of some joyous elf 

Singing sweet songs to please himself, 

And, through and over everything, 

A sense of glad awakening. 

The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear, 

Whispering to me I could hear; 

I felt the rain's cool finger-tips 

Brushed tenderly across my lips, 

Laid gently on my sealed sight, 

And all at once the heavy night 

Fell from my eyes and I could see, — 

A drenched and dripping apple-tree, 

A last long Ime of silver rain, 

A sky grown clear and blue again. 

And as I looked a quickening gust 

Of wind blew up to me and thrust 

Into my face a miracle 

Of orchard-breath, and wath the smell,- 

I know not how such things can be! — 

I breathed my soul back into me. 

Ah! up then from the ground sprang I 

And hailed the earth with such a cry 

As is not heard save from a man 

Who has been dead, and lives again. 

About the trees my arms I wound; 

Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 41 

I raised my quivering arms on high; 
I laughed and laughed into the sky, 
Till at my throat a strangling sob 
Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb 
Sent instant tears into my eyes; 

God, I cried, no dark disguise 
Can e'er hereafter hide from me 
Thy radiant identity! 

Thou canst not move across the grass 
But my quick eyes will see Thee pass, 
Nor speak, however silently. 
But my hushed voice will answer Thee. 

1 know the path that tells Thy way 
Through the cool eve of every day; 
God, I can push the grass apart 
And lay my finger on Thy heart! 

The world stands out on either side 
No wider than the heart is wide; 
Above the world is stretched the sky, — 
No higher than the soul is high. 
The heart can push the sea and land 
Farther away on either hand; 
The soul can split the sky in two, 
And let the face of God shine through. 
But East and West will pinch the heart 
That can not keep them pushed apart; 
And he whose soul is flat — the sky 
Will cave in on him by and by. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay 



INDIAN SUMMER 

{After completing a hook for one now dead.) 

(0 Earth-and-Auiumn of the Setting Sun, 
She is not by, to know my task is done!) 
In the brown grasses slanting with the wind, 
Lone as a lad whose dog's no longer near. 
Lone as a mother whose only child has sinned, 



42 NEW VOICES 

Lone on the loved hill ... . and below me here 
The thistle-down in tremulous atmosphere 
Along red clusters of the sumach streams; 
The shrivelled stalks of goldenrod are sere, 
And crisp and white their flashing old racemes. 
(. . . forever . . . forever . . . forever . . .) 
This is the lonely season of the year, 
This is the season of our lonely dreams. 

(0 Earth-and-Autumn of the Setting Sun, 
She is not by, to know my task is done!) 
The corn-shocks westward on the stubble plain 
Show hke an Indian village of dead days; 
The long smoke trails behind the crawling train, 
And floats atop the distant woods ablaze 
With orange, crimson, purple. The low haze 
Dims the scarped bluffs above the inland sea. 
Whose wide and slaty waters in cold glaze 
Await yon full-moon of the night-to-be, 
(. . . far . . . and far . . . and far . . .) 
These are the solemn horizons of man's ways, 
These are the horizons of solemn thought to me. 

(0 Earth-and-Autumn of the Setting Sun, 
She is not by, to know my task is done!) 
And this the hill she visited, as friend; 
And this the hill she lingered on, as bride — 
Down in the yellow valley is the end: 
They laid her ... in no evening autumn tide . „ . 
Under fresh flowers of that May morn, beside 
The queens and cave-women of ancient earth . . . 

This is the hill . . . and over my city's towers, 

Across the world from sunset, yonder in air, 

Shines, through its scaffoldings, a civic dome 

Of piled masonry, which shall be ours 

To give, completed, to our children there . . . 

And yonder far roof of my abandoned home 

Shall house new laughter . . . Yet I tried ... I tried 

And, ever wistful of the doom to come, 

I built her many a fire for love ... for mirth . . . 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 



43 



(When snows were falling on our oaks outside, 
Dear, many a winter fire upon the hearth) . . . 
(. . . farewell . . . farewell . . . farewell . . .) 
We dare not think too long on those who died, 
While still so many yet must come to birth. 

William Ellery Leonard 

THE DYING PATRIOT 

Day breaks on England down the Kentish hQls, 
Singing in the silence of the meadow-footing rills, 
Day of my dreams, O day! 

I saw them march from Dover, long ago, 

With a silver cross before them, singing low, 
Monks of Rome from their home where the blue seas break in foam, 

Augustine with his feet of snow. 

Noon strikes on England, noon on Oxford town, 

— Beauty she was statue cold — there's blood upon her gown: 

Noon of my dreams, O noon! 

Proud and godly kings had built her, long ago. 

With her towers and tombs and statues all arow, 
With her fair and floral air and the love that lingers there, 

And the streets where the great men go. 

Evening on the olden, the golden sea of Wales, 
When the first star shivers and the last wave pales: 
O evening dreams! 

There's a house that Britons walked in, long ago. 

Where now the springs of ocean fall and flow, 
And the dead robed in red and sea-lilies overhead 

Sway when the long winds blow. 

Sleep not, my country: though night is here, afar 
Your children of the morning are clamorous for war: 
Fire in the night, O dreams! 

Though she send you as she sent you, long ago, 

South to desert, east to ocean, west to snow, 
West of these out to seas colder than the Hebrides I must go 
Where the fleet of stars is anchored, and the young Star-captains glow. 

James Elroy Flecker, 



44 NEW VOICES 

CINQUAINS 
Fate Defied 

As it 

Were tissue of silver 

I'll wear, O fate, thy grey, 

And go, mistly radiant, clad 

Like the moon. 

The Guaeded Wound 

If it 

Were Hghter touch 

Than petal of flower resting 

On grass, oh still too heavy it were, 

Too heavy! 

November Night 

Listen . . . 

With faint dry sound. 

Like steps of passing ghosts. 

The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees 

And fall. 

Adelaide Crapsey 

THE CEDARS 

All down the years llie fragrance came. 
The mingled fragrance, with a flame, 
Of Cedars breathing in the sun, 
The Cedar-trees of Lebanon. 

O thirst of song in bitter air. 
And hope, wing-hurt from iron care, 
What balm of myrrh and honey, won 
From far-off trees of Lebanon! 

Not from these eyelids yet, have I 
Ever beheld that early sky. 
Why do they call me through the sun? — 
Even the trees of Lebanon? 

Josephine Preston Peabody 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 45 



TAMPICO 

Oh, cut me reeds to blow upon, 

Or gather me a star, 
But leave the sultry passion-flowers 

Growing where they are. 

I fear their sombre yellow deeps, 

Their whirling fringe of black, 
And he who gives a passion-flower 

Always asks it back. 

Grace Hazard Canklmg 

WHO LOVES THE RAIN 

Who loves the rain, 

And loves his home, 
And looks on life with quiet eyes, 

Him will I folio v/ through the storm; 

And at his hearth-fire keep me warm; 
Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise. 

Who loves the rain. 

And loves his home, 
And looks on life with quiet eyes. 

Frances Shaw 

A CYPRIAN WOMAN: GREEK FOLK SONG 

Under dusky laurel leaf, 

Scarlet leaf of rose, 
I lie prone, who have known 

All a woman knows. 

Love and grief and motherhood, 

Fame and mirth and scorn — 
These are all shall befall 

Any woman born. 

Jewel-laden are my hands 

Tall my stone above. 
Do not weep that I sleep 

Who was wise in love. 



46 NEW VOICES 

Where I walk, a shadow gray 

Through gray asphodel, 
I am glad, who have had 

All that life can tell. 

Margaret Widdemer 

PSALM 

They have burned to Thee many tapers in many temples: 
I burn to Thee the taper of my heart. 

They have sought Thee at many altars, they have carried Ughts to 

find Thee: 
I find thee in The white fire of my heart. 

They have gone forth restlessly, forging many shapes, images where 

they seek Thee, idols of deed and thought: 
Thou art the fire of my deeds; Thou art the white flame of my dreams. 

vanity! They know things and codes and customs, 

They believe what they see to be true; but they know not Thee, 
Thou art within the light of their eyes that see, and the core of fire. 

The white fire of my heart forges the shapes of my brain; 

The white fire of my heart is a sun, and my deeds and thoughts are its 

dark planets; 
It is a far flame of Thee, a star in Thy firmament. 

With pleasant warmth flicker the red fires of the hearth, 

And the blue, mad flames of the marsh flare and consume themselves: 

1 too am an ember of Thee, a little star; my warmth and my light travel 

a long way. 

So little, so wholly given to its human quest, 

And yet of Thee, wholly of Thee, Thou Unspeakable, 

All the colors of life in a burning white mist 

Pure and intense as Thou, O Heart of life! 

Frail is my taper, it flickers in the storm. 

It is blown out in the great wind of the world: 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 47 

Yet when the world is dead a-nd the seas are a crust of salt, 

When the sun is dark in heaven and the stars have changed their 

courses, 
Forever somewhere with Thee, on the altar of Ufe 
Shall still burn the white fire of my heart. 

Jessie E. Sampler 

DEIRDRE 

Do not let any woman read this verse; 
It is for men, and after them their sons 
■ And their sons' sons. 

The time comes when our hearts sink utterly; 
When we remember Deirdre and her tale, 
And that her lips are dust. 

Once she did tread the earth: men took her hand; 
They looked into her eyes and said their say. 
And she replied to them. 

More than a thousand years it is since she 
Was beautiful: she trod the waving grass; 
She saw the clouds. 

A thousand years! The grass is still the same, 
The clouds as lovely as they were that time 
When Deirdre v/as alive. 

But there has never been a woman born 
Who was so beautiful, not one so beautiful 
Of all the women born. 

Let all men go apart and mourn together; 
No man can ever love her; not a man 
Can ever be her lover. 

No man can bend before her: no man say — 
What could one say to her? There are no words 
That one could say to her! 



48 NEW VOICES 

Now she is but a story that is told 
Beside the fire! No man can ever be 
The friend of that poor queen. 



James Stephens 



AN APRIL MORNING* 

Once more in misted April 
The world is growing green. 
Along the winding river 
The plumey willows lean. 

Beyond the sweeping meadows 
The looming mountains rise, 
Like battlements of dreamland 
Against the brooding skies. 

In every wooded valley 
The buds are breaking through, 
As though the heart of ail things 
No languor ever knew. 

The golden-wings and bluebirds 
Call to their heavenly choirs. 
The pines are blued and drifted 
With smoke of brushwood fires. 

x\nd in my sister's garden 
Where little breezes run. 
The golden daffodillies 
Are blowing in the sun. 



Bliss Carman 



f THE ANSWER 

When I go back to earth 
And all my joyous body 
Puts off the red and white 
That once had been so proud, 

*From April Airs by Bliss Carman, copyright, 1916, reprinted by permission of the 
publishers. Small, Maynard & Company, Inc. 



THE PATTERN OF A POEM 49 

If men should pass above 
With false and feeble pity, 
My dust will find a voice 
To answer them aloud: 



"Be still, I am content. 

Take back your poor compassion i — 

Joy was a flame in me 

Too steady to destroy. 

Lithe as a bending reed 

Loving the storm that sways her — 

I found more joy in sorrow 

Than you could find in joy." 

Sara Teasdale 

WHAT DIM ARCADIAN PASTURES 

What dim Arcadian pastures 

Have I known 
That suddenly, out of nothing, 

A wind is blown, 
Lifting a veil and a darkness. 
Showing a purple sea — 
And under your hair the faun's eyes 

Look out on me? 

Alice Corbin 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 

Not many years ago, when we of this generation attended 
school, the word "rhythm" had an occult and mysterious sound. 
We heard very little about it. But we heard of "meter" quite 
frequently. "Meter" meant tiresome exercises in "scansion." 
"Meter" meant memorizing formidable definitions of words 
like "anapaest" and "amphibrach." How we hated it! "Me- 
ter" and "scansion" were good for us because they provided 
"mental drill," and poetry was the disastrous result of the in- 
vention of "anapaest" and "amphibrach." How we hated 
the poets ! We resolved that when we had left school and could 
choose freely we would have nothing to do with poetry ! Unfortu- 
nately many of us kept the resolution. 

On the other hand, when we became men and women, many 
of us realized that such words as "anapaest" and "amphi- 
brach" were made and defined by grammarians and critics, not 
by poets. We realized that this technical language could be 
made useful and satisfactory in its own way. Very likely the 
ability to analyze and dissect the metrical structure of a poem 
has a real importance for the well-educated man or woman. But 
many of us learned too late what might have brought us nearer 
to the joy of poetry if we had learned it sooner, that this ability 
to analyze and dissect metrical structures according to the rules 
of teachers and critics is of small importance in comparison 
with the ability to feel a beautiful rhythm and enjoy a fine poem. 
Who ever gave us a clue to the meaning of rhythm in poetry? 
Who shared with us a sense of the joy and beauty in the rhythms 
of English verse? Did anyone ever tell us, for our comfort, 
that many a maker of beautiful lyrics has made them with no 
knowledge at all of the school-book definitions of "anapaest" 
and "amphibrach" ? 

so 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 51 

Therefore it may be a very fortunate thing that we use that 
prosaic little word "meter" less nowadays, and that we have 
more to say about rhythm. For even when poets can not define 
"anapaest" and "amphibrach," they are much concerned with 
the use of them and with their effect and meaning. 

"Rhythm" is a larger, kinder, and more poetic word than 
"meter." It comes from a good old Greek root that means 
"to flow." We may think of rhythm, therefore, as we think of 
waves or ripples. It is the wave-Hke flowing of sequences of 
sound in poetry. And, in thinking of it in this way, we shall be 
thinking of something more fundamentally important than the 
rules of prosody as given in our rhetorics. We shall be thinking 
of the force that is behind and beyond those rules. We shall be 
returning to the source whence came the thing about which rules 
have been made. 

In English poetry nearly always, and in almost all other poetry, 
rhythm has been more powerfully felt than any other element. 
So powerfully does a strong rhythm work upon us that many 
persons like to think that rhythm, in and of itself, is poetry. 
This is not true, of course, for any jargon can be set to the tune 
of a strong rhythm. And many rhythms actually have been 
misused in this way, stupidly by imitators, cleverly by parodists. 
Nevertheless, poems that have rhythmical vitality, poems that 
sway like wind-driven trees, leap like great geysers, roll sonorous 
monotones in upon consciousness at regular intervals, like the 
sea, or dance gaily like little white fountains, such poems wiU 
be heard and remembered when many brilliant pictures and 
proverbs, solemn saws and pretty sentiments, have been for- 
gotten. 

This is inevitable and natural, for we live and have our being 
in rhythm. A flaw in the rhythm of the breatli may mean a 
disease of the lungs. A flaw in the rhythm of the blood may mean 
a disease of the heart. A break in the rhythm may mean death. 
And all emotions change the rhythms of the body, quickening 
or retarding, accentuating or interrupting. In these facts we 
find the reasons for the value of rhythm in poetry. 



52 NEW VOICES 

In these facts, also, we find the reason for the emotional 
effects of the several kinds of rhythm. The cadence or sound 
wliich is the true result of personal emotion will produce in the 
reader an effect of the same or similar emotion. Or, w^hen a 
poet is more than personal, when he shares the ebb and flow of 
racial or national feeling and puts this into a poem, there will be 
something more than mere personal emotion in the effect of his 
rhythm upon his reader. Doubtless the great and typical 
rhythms that distinguish the poetry of the great races — English 
blank verse, for example, or the heroic hexameter of the Greek, 
are the result of the racial way of feeling things and putting 
them into speech. The epic measure of the Iliad gives again 
to all sensitive listeners a share in the emotions of the men of 
Homer's nation. The Irish dirges used in keening give a sense 
of sorrow and death to any person in any land whose sense of 
rhythmical values has not been destroyed by bad training; and 
they give also what we may call an Irish sense of sorrow and 
death. The poets of the Celtic revival in the United States, 
poets whose work is imitative and written a la mode, with an 
enthusiasm for the Celtic revival as an inspiring influence, have 
never been able to get into their work any of this unforgettable 
racial quality of rhythm. A triolet, on the other hand, is simply 
a rhythmical echo of pretty, whimsical, personal emotion. 
When we hear a good triolet read, even in a language that we 
do not know, we feel that touch of pretty, whimsical, personal 
emotion in the rhythm. We are stroked by the wings of a butter- 
fly, chastised by thistledown; we are not shaken by thunder, 
whipped by the wind. 

Therefore it would seem reasonable to suppose that, when a 
rhythm is chosen arbitrarily, selected from a chapter on prosody 
in a rhetoric, and forced into unwilling wedlock with a mood or 
meaning which might have been fruitfully happy with its own 
congenial cadence, the result is fundamental disharmony, bad 
poetry. Moreover, in the minds of great lyric singers it usually 
happens that emotion suggests the idea of the poem and the 
rhythm of it simultaneously, and that sense and sound grow 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 



53 



together as it is made. The mood and the rhythm, growing 
together in the mind, have that organic unity which is Hkely 
to stir the emotion of the reader as the poet's emotion is stirred; 
and this is what the contemporary poet means when he speaks 
of "organic rhythm." It is rhythm of one kind with the mood 
and meaning of the poem. 

Many of the best conscious craftsmen of our time are studying 
these matters of the emotional causes of rhythm and its emo- 
tional effect. They are trying many experiments. Most of the 
experiments fail, but the new endeavor to create new beauty 
may lead to a new kind of skill and to the production of new 
rhythmical masterpieces. And tolerant persons will welcome 
experiments even when they do not Hke the immediate re- 
sults. 

What is sometimes called "the vers libre movement" seems to 
have been valuable chiefly because it has been a way of making 
experiments with rhythm. Few poets have used the free 
rhythms creditably, not to say beautifully. And unfortunately, 
numerous poetasters undisciplined in the artistic use of rhythm, 
and ignorant of the ancient, symmetrical designs of Enghsh 
verse, persons who could not write a couplet or a quatrain cor- 
rectly, seized the opportunity afforded by the vogue of free 
verse to place themselves before the public in the guise of poets. 
It was never anything more than a mask. They wrote in what 
they supposed was free verse for no better reason than that given 
by the lazy housewife who had beans instead of potatoes for 
dinner. "It's less bother. You don't have to peel 'em." Such 
poetasters simply cut up long lines of level prose rhythms into 
random lengths, and set them down on pages that would have 
been better off clean. Such chopped up prose lines had no poetic 
cadence because no poetic lift of emotion produced them, or 
produced a rhytlim for them. Therefore they had no power to 
produce an emotion in the reader. At best they put before us a 
more or less trivial mental picture or stimulated us intellectually 
and superficially by their specious imaginative cleverness. At 
worst they were simply banal, or else they aroused in the reader 



54 NEW VOICES 

by shock and sensationalism what they could not awaken in the 
ways natural and appropriate to poetry, a sense of perverted 
excitement. But, when the novelty of it had worn off, we were 
bored rather than amused by the shrieking, grimacing, head- 
hne quahty of much that was called free verse. Such experi- 
ments failed because the motives of their makers were wrong. 
Such experiments were not sincerely made with the desire to 
create a living beauty. They were idly and easily made with the 
desire to vv^rite quickly. 

In general it may be said that the poets who have written 
best in free verse have been poets skilled in the use of the regular 
rhythms of Enghsh verse. But even these poets have failed far 
more frequently than they have succeeded in the making of 
free verse. The reason for their failures seems to be found in the 
fact that their very great interest in craftsmanship for its own 
sake has caused them sometimes to work too intellectually. 
They have sometimes disregarded the fact that real emotion is 
the genesis of all good rhythm. When Amy Lowell and Ezra 
Pound fail to make good poems, in spite of their comprehensive 
knowledge of the art of poetry, it is quite probably because they 
are creating according to theory and not as result of genuine 
feehng. The great law never fails: the rhythm that is the result 
of emotion is likely to have value, be it never so primitive; the 
rhythm that is the result of intellectual striving will be as dead 
as the dry, still sand in the desert at noon. 

But in spite of the fact that fev/ good poems have been written 
in free verse, the art of poetry has been enriched by the greater 
facility which this experimenting with rhythms has made pos- 
sible. No one has shown that symmetry of design may not be 
secured in a poem by other means than the use of rhythm, letting 
rhythm be varied from line to line in accordance with mood 
and meaning; and the ideal of a great poem written in verse 
freer than that of any known masterpiece and yet powerfully 
rhythmical and well designed, is an ideal which no poet should 
be willing to banish from his heart and hope. For the few good 
poems written in free verse are so very good that they confirm 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 55 

us in the faith that verse, made by a master, may be very free 
and very beautiful. Whenever free verse has been written in 
accordance with an ideal of poetic beauty, and sincerely, as the 
result of genuine emotion, it has a characteristic and unforget- 
table magic. 

Constance Lindsay Skinner's poems of the hf e of the American 
Indian are written in admirable free verse. They are strongly 
charged with the primitive emotions of life. They are very 
simple, natural and direct in style. And in spite of the fact that 
the typical cadences are not repeated frequently enough, in 
most of the poems, to make a very regular pattern, we find in the 
cadences a very real pleasure, the kind of pleasure that we feel 
in simple, passionate speech. Her ''Song of The Full Catch" 
is more symmetrical in design than most of the other poems and 
has a most moving rhythm. It is an unusually beautiful poem, 
beginning with the lines, 

"Here's good wind, here's sweet wind, 
Here's good wind and my woman calls me!" 

In her ''Song of Cradle-Making" the cadences are even more 
like the cadences of speech : 

"I will trim thy cradle with many shells, and with cedar-fringes; 
Thou shalt have goose feathers on thy blanket! 
I ^vill bear thee in my hands along the beach, 
Singing as the sea sings," 

Sure and strong fidelity to the laws of passionate human speech 
is what makes these lines poetry. 

Carl Sandburg is another American poet who makes his 
poems with what we may call the rhythms of speech. In all of 
his poems we hear a man talking. He rarely sings. His song is 
always speech. Sometimes the speech is inflated and bombastic 
and oratorical. But always it is vivid and interesting and always 
it shares life with us. In his quaint little poem, " Monosyllabic," 
he even says this very thing about himself. 



56 NEW VOICES 

*'Let me be a monosyllabic to-day, O Lord. 
Yesterday I loosed a snarl of words on a fool, on a child. 
To-day, let me be monosyllabic ... a crony of old men who wash 
sunlight in their fingers and enjoy slow-pacing clocks." 

This is simply beautiful speech — especially beautiful in the last 
line — arranged in a rhythm of aspiration — or, if you like it 
better, of petition — prayer. In his screed addressed to "A 
Contemporary Bunkshooter" he is simply a man talking vio- 
lently, more violently than anybody who is not a poet can talk. 
And in his serenely beautiful poem, "Cool Tombs," we find 
poetic speech again. 

"Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in No- 
vember or a paw-paw in May, did she wonder? does she re- 
member? ... in the dust, in the cool tombs? 

Here the long, level, undulating rhythms of ordinary prose are 
broken just as they would be in intimate and eloquent conversa- 
tion. 

John Gould Fletcher is another American poet who has writ- 
ten creditable free verse. But his ideal is not an ideal of speech 
in poetry. He is not a poet of Mr. Sandburg's kind. He is an 
Imagist, and believes that poetry is the setting forth of "im- 
ages" in rhythmical language in such a way as will make them 
stimulate emotion in the reader. His best work is excellent 
poetry, really felt, heartily imagined, adequately expressed in 
rhythm. One of the finest strophes he has written, and one 
quite typical of -his genius, is the first in "Irradiations." It 
should be read aloud and with due regard for the pauses. Other- 
wise the beauty of it may be lost. 

"Over the roof-tops race the shadows of clouds: 
Like horses the shadows of clouds charge down the street. 

Whirlpools of purple and gold, 

Winds from the mountains of cinnabar. 

Lacquered mandarin moments, palanquins swaying and balancing, 



i 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 57 

Amid the vermillion pavilions, against the jade balustrades; 
Glint of the glittering wings of dragon flies in the light 
Silver filaments, golden flakes settling downwards; 
Rippling, quivering flutters; repulse and surrender, 
The sun broidered upon the rain, 
The rain rustling with the sun. 

Over the roof-tops race the shadows of clouds; 

Like horses the shadows of clouds charge down the street." 

In this poem, obviously, the cadences are conditioned by the 
imagery. They move with it fluently and are of one kind with 
it. Organic rhythm again and free rhythm again, but a rhythm 
of a kind very different from that used by Miss Skinner and Mr. 
Sandburg. To be sure the chief cunning of this poem is to be 
found in the picture presented with shrewdly chosen color- 
words and words that show movement. " Vermillion pavilions," 
''jade balustrades," "golden flakes settling downward," ''rip- 
pUng, quivering flutters" — what a group of pictures, what a 
series of sound echoes! But in the rhythm of the two lines that 
begin and end the strophe we find another good and sufficient 
reason for the vitality of this free verse. 

Somewhat less regularly stressed is the rhythm of ''The Most 
Sacred Mountain" by Eunice Tietjens. This is a poem of exul- 
tation, and the rhythm of it is rhapsodic, passionate, and, for 
that very reason, fluent and free. The first three lines say, with 
absolute fidelity to emotion, what one might desire to say in a 
mood of exultation, what one would be likely not to say, for 
lack of power to feel and speak at the same time. 

"vSpace, and the twelve clean winds of heaven, 

And this sharp exultation, like a cry, after the slow six thousand feet 

of climbing! 
This is Tai Shan, the beautiful, the most holy." 

The truth of this rhythm as an expression of emotion can be 
felt strongly even by persons ;who do not like the kind of free 
verse which has been called "shredded prose." Where then, 



58 NEW VOICES 

can we find the boundary line between verse and prose? Per- 
haps we can not find it. As the fines grow longer and vary more 
in the matter of the recurrence of stresses, the rhytlims become 
more fike prose, less like song. But it would be very difficult 
indeed to tell just when lines become too long and level to be- 
long to verse. And other matters must be considered with the 
matter of rhythm in determining whether any bit of literature 
is poetry or prose. We must take into account the conciseness 
of the expression, the emotional or intellectual quality, the 
imagery and symbolism, the power of the imagination in the 
presentation of the theme. But if any bit of literature- be good 
literature, we may find legitimate enjoyment in it, even if we 
are unable to classify it. As a craftsman's attempt at classifi- 
cation, however. Amy Lowell's definition seems to be the most 
satisfactory definition yet made. It is geometrical. Miss 
Lowell says that regularly stressed verse may be represented 
by a fine sharply curved back upon itself, that prose may be rep- 
resented by an undulating line running straight ahead in any 
one direction, and that free verse may be represented by a line 
with a curve less sharp than the line representing regularly 
stressed verse. Perhaps she would say that her own poly- 
phonic prose is like a line undulating more regularly than the 
line of ordinary prose. At any rate, that would be a good de- 
scription of the rhythm of her polyphonic prose. And since 
polyphonic prose is a new kind of organic rhythm, something 
should be said about it here. 

In the first place. Miss Lowell introduced it into our language, 
and no one else who is writing English poetry has made any 
noteworthy attempt to use it. It is a prose with typical ca- 
dences reiterated at intervals and with many rhymes and sound 
echoes. Like regular verse and like the best free verse its source 
is im genuine emotion. But like prose it is not lyrical. It does 
not sing. The lines of it move forever forward. There is no 
backward curve, no return. It is, therefore, an admirable form 
for narratives. For it intensifies our sense of excitement and 
bears us on to the end with a greater fluency than that of or- 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 59 

dinary prose. The reading of polyphonic prose gives a sense of 
rapid movement that level, unrhymed prose lacks. The quality 
of Miss Lowell's polyphonic prose rhythms is essentially dra- 
matic. These Hnes from a superb narrative poem, "The Bronze 
Horses," show what polyphonic prose can be at its best: 

"What is the sound? The marble city shivers to the treading of 
feet. Caesar's legions marching, foot — foot — hundreds, thousands of 
feet. They beat the ground, rounding each step double. Coming — 
coming — cohort after cohort, with brazen trumpets marking the time. 
One — two — one — two — laurel-crowned each one of you, cactus-fibred, 
harsh as sand grinding the rocks of a treeless land, rough and 
salt as Dead Sea wind, only the fallen are left behind. Blood-red 
plumes, jarring to the footfalls; they have passed through the gate, 
they are in the walls of the mother city, of marble Rome. Back to 
Rome with a victor's spoils, with a victor's wreath on every head, 
and Judah broken is dead, dead! ^lo triumphel ' The shout knocks 
and breaks upon the spears of the legionaries." 

Our illustrations might be multiplied without giving an ade- 
quate sense of the pleasure to be had from reading a whole 
poem in polphonic prose aloud. For that is the only way to 
test the value of it. Free verse and polphonic prose have re- 
ceived more superficial attention than honest consideration; 
and that is unfortunate, for superficial attention is only adver- 
tisement; honest consideration may find a recipe or a cure. 
But if many persons would read these poems aloud and if we 
might have a consensus of their opinions, we might find a way 
of estimating the value of such rhythms. Before the value of 
any kind of poetry can be determined it must be set free from 
*the print on the pages of a book. 

Before we go on to a consideration of organic rhythms of a 
kind more regularly stressed and in more symmetrical designs, 
it is well to note that William Morrison Patterson of Columbia 
University has written a book which should go into the hands of 
young poetry craftsmen in company with Sidney Lanier's 
"Science of English Verse." It is called "The Rhythm of 
Prose." and in it Professor Patterson describes his tests of 



6o NEW VOICES 

the time-values of rhythm. The book is written in a scientific 
rather than an inspirational vein, but is the more valuable 
for that reason. Poets can usually find inspiration. But 
their knowledge of rhythm can be increased by a careful pres- 
entation of facts discovered through experiment. This is a 
book for all who wish to make a thorough and careful study of 
the subject of rhythm. 

The poets who have written in free verse are not the only 
poets who have rediscovered the ancient law of all good poetry, 
which is that rhythm must rise out of the emotion felt. All of 
the poets who have recently won the attention of critics and the 
interest of the most intelligent and imaginative pubUc are poets 
who have shown a reverence for this law. 

One of the masterpieces of modern rhythm is Gilbert K. Ches- 
terton's "Lepanto," a superb martial ballad about the Battle 
of Lepanto fought between the Turks and Don John of Austria 
in 157 1. From end to end of the poem the rhythm is a de- 
light. Words, phrases, images flash and sparkle, riding lightly 
on the surface of the tune. But the rhythm stirs the very depths 
of the spirit, for it is very swift and strong, very large and ample, 
yet never monotonous, for it includes a great variety of minor 
cadences. Just when the length of the long lines with their 
powerful stresses can hardly be sustained any longer by heart 
and voice, the lines ebb into shorter lines with sharper rhythmical 
curves and with accents like arrows newly fallen and quivering 
with shock. These lines illustrate the power of the rhythm of 
the poem as well as any other hnes that might be taken from it 
to stand alone: 

'Tn that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid, 

Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade. 

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far, 

Don John of Austria is going to the war, 

Stiff-flags straining in the night-blasts cold 

In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold , 

TorchHght crimson on the copper kettle-drums, 

Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes. 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 6i 

Don John laughing in the brave beard curled, 
Spurning of his stirrups Hke the thrones of all the world, 
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free. 
Love-hght of Spain — hurrah! 
Death-hght of Africa! 
Don John of Austria 
Is riding to the sea." 

In strong contrast with the martial clangor and speed of this 
rhythm is the swaying and restful movement of Max Eastman's 
''Coming To Port," a rhythm with all the enchanting languor 
of movement that is in the great steamer slowing down to anchor 
beside 'a dock. One does not need to be a sapient critic to feel 
the oneness of this rhythm with the theme and emotion of the 
poem. It is wistful and quiet in sound and meaning, a slow 
and sensuous reverie. 

"Our motion on the soft, still, misty river 
Is like rest; and like the hours of doom 
That rise and follow one another ever 
Ghosts of sleeping battle cruisers loom 
And languish quickly in the Hquid gloom." 

Very often in rhymed and regularly stressed poetry, as in the 
free verse which we have already discussed, we can trace the 
origin of good rhythm by taking a clue from the opening line or 
hnes, which seem to be like natural speech. In Walter de la 
Mare's charmingly melodic poem, "The Listeners," it seems pos- 
sible that the rhythm of the whole may have been determined by 
the cadence of the first line. 

"'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller, 

Knocking on the moonlit door; 
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses 

On the forest's ferny floor: 
And a bird flew up out of the turret, 

Above the Traveller's head: 
And he smote upon the door again a second time; 

'Is there anybody there?' he said." 



62 NEW VOICES 

If this poem had been as well begun by a man without genius, 
it would certainly have been spoiled in the third line. It would 
have faltered, flattened out and become monotonous. We should 
have had a third line something like this — ''His horse would 
champ the grasses." And the rest of the poem, which is a mas- 
terpiece of its kind, would have been made to go by jerks. The 
sense and style would have been sacrificed to regularity and a 
very beautiful and original rhythm would never have been heard. 
Let us be thankful that Mr. de la Mare wrote his poem — all of it! 

Similarly Rudyard Kipling, whose rhythms are exceedingly 
modern in quahty, although he began writing before most of 
our contemporary poets who are famous to-day, seems to take 
a cadence of speech as the rhythmical beginning of many of his 
poems. And it is a well known fact that liis rhythms are largely 
responsible for the great popularity of his poetry. In that jolly 
"Road Song of the Bandar Log" we find the following lines: 

"Here we go in a flung festoon 

Half way up to the jealous moon ! 

Don't you envy our pranceful bands? 

Don't you wish you had extra hands? 

Wouldn't you like if your tail were — so — 

Curved in the shape of a Cupid's bow? 
Now you're angry, but — never mind, 
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!'* 

It may very well be that Mr. Kipling, visualizing in his own 
mind that ''branchy row" of monkeys, began his rhythm quite 
spontaneously, and, in the reader's mind, irresistibly, with that 
natural bit of speech "Here we go." If this be true, he had only 
to add the good imagery of "in a flung festoon" to have a fine 
rhythmical tune for his poem. 

Another poem, an excellent lyric which may have been made 
in much the same way, is Margaret Widdemer's "Remembrance: 
Greek Folk Song." The rhythm of the whole poem seems to have 
grown naturally from the first cadence. "Not unto the forest, 
O my lover!" 




MARGARET WIDDEMER 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 63 

More than any poet who uses regularly stressed rhythms, 
Robert Frost is influenced by the tunes of human conversation, 
and he is the greatest living master of the poetry that talks. 
Although he has written a few good lyrics, song is not his gift. 
But in all of his poems Vv^e find something of the warmth and 
depth and richness, the sudden humor, the droll whimsy, the 
characteristic innuendo and flexible intimacy of conversation. 
To read them is to share profound mirth, amazing tragedy, 
dehcious irony made out of talk and of one substance with it. 
But Mr. Frost's poems are always more than speech. They are 
always poetry. They never become mere oratory. And most of 
them keep very close to blank verse as a basic rhythm, the old 
racial rhythm of our language. Perhaps it would be true to say 
that Mr. Frost uses a relaxed form of blank verse, a blank verse 
greatly modified by the cadences of speech. 

" Something there is that doesn't love a wall," says Mr. Frost. 
A Post- Victorian imitator of the great Victorians would never 
have written such a line. He might have said something like 
this — 

"A wall, I think, is quite superfluous!" 

thereby sacrificing nature and imagination — ^poetry — to a 
school-book rule of accent. The poem would have lacked what 
all poems must have — life. Consider the homely life in this 
passage taken from the same poem, " Mending Wall." 

"He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.' 
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder 
If I could put a notion in his head? 
Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it 
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. 
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know 
What I was walling in or walling out, 
And to whom I was like to give offence. 
Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 
That wants it down. I could say 'Elves' to him, 
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather 
He said it for himself." 



64 NEW VOICES 

When we read lines like these we do not need to be told that 
Mr. Frost uses blank verse as others have not used it. Here is 
blank verse written with respect for the plain, stubborn wills and 
voices of his story, the wills and voices that twist and turn and 
alter and exalt language by their daily use of it. It is probable 
that critics who have called Mr. Frost's work lumpy and uneven 
have simply failed to understand his idea of what poetry ought to 
be. 

But one of the finest examples of rhythm as the accompani- 
ment of mood and meaning, organic rhythm at its best, is "The 
Santa Fe Trail" by Vachel Lindsay. And in all American liter- 
ature we find no greater master of rhythm than he. It is our 
absurd fashion to treat his poems with jocular kindness because 
they are popular, and because they are so full of our folk lore 
and our folk spirit that we fail to perceive how very good they 
are. It may be worth while to say that when William Butler 
Yeats last visited this country he went to Chicago and met Vachel 
Lindsay. He greeted him as the first American poet of to-day. 

Certainly Vachel Lindsay can do anything he likes with 
rhythm. His rhythms skip and turn somersaults, rock and 
reel, whirl giddily, bend and sway solemnly, march slowly in 
great circles, shake the air looser in the heavens and give a new 
exhilaration and exuberance to all but the stiff-necked and 
stupid. No other poem shows his power as a master of poetic 
music better than "The Santa Fe Trail." 

In it are three tunes. First there is the tune of the racing 
automobiles going westward on the road that runs parallel to 
the double-track railroad, and of their honking horns that speak 
the souls of their owners. This is a crashing, blaring, hiurrying, 
discordant tune. When we hear it we forget that we are reading 
poetry. We see those speeding cars. We watch the United 
States going by. We hear the shrill and the raucus voices of the 
horns. Nothing could be better in the way of verisimilitude of 
presentation. 

" On through the ranges the prairie-dog tills, 
Scooting past the cattle on the thousand hills. . . 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 65 

Ho for the tear-horn, scare-horn, dare-horn, 
Ho for the gay-horn, bark-horn, bay-horn. 
Ho for Kansas, land that restores us 
When houses choke us and great books bore us!" 

It is to that pace that the first tune runs. 

The second tune is the tune of the poet's reverie as he sits 
"by another big Santa Fe stone," a quiet and slow rhythm al- 
though it is closely related to the first noisy and speedy rhythm. 

"My goal is the mystery the beggars win. 
I am caught in the web the night-winds spin. 
The edge of the wheat-ridge speaks to me; 
I talk with the leaves of the mulberry tree."' 

And the third tune is the tune of the " Rachel- Jane " singing 
"far away," a little lyric melody not at all like the other tunes 
of the poem and yet belonging to both of them. 

"Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet! 

Dew and glory, 

Love and truth — 

Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet!" 

We shall find this rhythmical verisimilitude of presentation 
in all of Mr. Lindsay's best work, his social and choral poetry, 
and we shall look a long time for it before we find it elsewhere. 
It is the very strength of "The Kallyope Yell." Who that has 
heard the "Kallyope" on circus day does not remember its 
"Willy, willy, wah-hoo!" and the humorous finality of its 
"Szz-fizz?" Who has not heard it squeal and shriek, 

"I am the Kallyope, Kallyope, Kallyope, 

Tooting hope, tooting hope, tooting hope, tooting hope!" 

And then there is that much bigger and more important work, 
"The Congo," one of the best poems ever written about the 
American negro, a poem full of the strength, the music, the bar- 
baric love of color, and the wild religion of the race. The rhyth- 
mical tune of it is so much a part of the sense of it and of the 



66 NEW VOICES 

emotion and picturing that one can hardly separate it from them 
for purposes of analysis. 

"Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, 

Barrel-house kings with feet unstable, 

Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table. 

Pounded on the table, 

Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, 

Hard as they were able. 

Boom, boom, boom. 

With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom, 

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom. 

Then I had religion, then I had a vision 

I could not turn from their revel in derision. 

Then I saw the Congo creeping through the black, 
Cutting through the forest with a golden track.'' 

Perhaps enough has been said, about organic rhythm in con- 
temporary poetry to show what the best living poets think about 
it and how they use it. They are teaching us what men forgot 
in the ages when poetry was a bookish art, what minstrels have 
always made us remember and what lyric singers dream of — 
the beautiful art of hearing. Once again our ears are being 
trained to hear the beauty of the Word. Poetry to-day, like 
the best poetry of all periods, is the result of a sincere act of 
creation that unites meaning and emotion with melody, as with 
images and symbols. Nothing is artistically worse than indig- 
nation waltzing, unless it is sorrow capering to the lilt of a tango 
or joy droning a dirge. 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 



67 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL— A HUMORESQUE 

I asked the old negro, ^^What is that bird that sings so well?^^ He an- 
swered, "That is the Rachel-Jane.'^ "HasnH it another name — 
lark, or thrush, or the like? " "No, jus ' Rachel-Jane J^ 



In which a Racing Auto comes from the East. 

This is the order of the music of the morning:— J^J^ ^^""^ f^}' 

First, from the far East comes but a crooning; provised tune 

The crooning turns to a sunrise singing. 

Hark to the cahn-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn; 

Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn .... 



Hark to the pace-horn, chase-horn, race-horn! 

And the holy veil of the dawn has gone, 

Swiftly the brazen car comes on. 

It burns in the East as the sunrise burns 

I see great flashes where the far trail turns. 

Its eyes are lamps like the eyes of dragons. 

It drinks gasoline from big red flagons. 

Butting through the deUcate mists of the morning, 

It comes like lightning, goes past roaring. 

It will hail all the wind-mills, taunting, ringing. 

Dodge the cyclones, 

Count the milestones. 

On through the ranges the prairie-dog tills, j 

Scooting past the cattle on the thousand hiUsj . . 

Ho for the tear-horn, scare-horn, dare-horn. 

Ho for the gay-horn, bark-horn, bay-horn. 

Ho for Kansas, land that restores us 

When houses choke us, and great books bore us! 

Sunrise Kansas, harvester's Kansas, 

A million men have found you before us. 



To be sung or 
read with great 
speed 



To be read or 
sung in a rolling 
bass with some 
deliberation. 



II 

In which Many Autos pass Westward. 

I want live things in their pride to remain. 
I will not kill one grasshopper vain 



In an even, de- 
liberate, narra- 
tive manner 



68 NEW VOICES 

Though he eats a hole in my shirt Hke a door. 
I let him out, give him one chance more. 
Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim, 
Grasshopper lyrics occur to him. 

I am a tramp by the long trail's border, 
Given to squalor, rags and disorder. 
I nap and amble and yawn and look, 
Write fool-thoughts in my grubby book, 
Recite to the children, explore at my ease, 
Work when I work, beg when I please, 
Give crank drawings, that make folks stare, 
To the half-grown boys in the sunset-glare; 
And get me a place to sleep in the hay 
At the end of a Hve-and-let-live day. 

I find in the stubble of the new-cut weeds 
A whisper and a feasting, all one needs: 
The whisper of the strawberries, white and red, 
Here where the new-cut weeds lie dead. 
But I would not walk all alone till I die 
Without some Hfe-drunk horns going by. 
Up round this apple-earth they come, 
Blasting the whispers of the morning dumb : — 
Cars in a plain realistic row. 
And fair dreams fade 
When the raw horns blow. 

On each snapping pennant 

A big black name — 

The careering city 
Like a train- Whence each car came. 
Depot '^ "^°° They tour from Memphis, Atlanta, Savannah, 

Tallahassee and Texarkana. 

They tour from St. Louis, Columbus, Manistee, 

They tour from Peoria, Davenport, Kankakee. 

Cars from Concord, Niagara, Boston, 

Cars from Topeka, Emporia and Austin. 

Cars from Chicago, Hannibal, Cairo, 

Cars from Alton, Oswego, Toledo. 

Cars from Buffalo, Kokomo, Delphi, 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 69 

Cars from Lodi, Carmi, Loami. 

Ho for Kansas, land that restores us 

When houses choke us, and great books bore us! 

While I watch the highroad 

And look at the sky, 

While I watch the clouds in amazing grandeur 

Roll their legions without rain 

Over the bHstering Kansas plain — 

While I sit by the milestone 

And watch the sky, 

The United States 

Goes by! 

Listen to the iron horns, ripping, racking. _ hrrswfwiira'^ 

' Listen to the quack horns, slack and clacking! snapping ex- 

Way down the road, trilling like a toad, 
Here comes the dice-horn, here comes the vice-horn, 
Here comes the snarl-horn, brawl-horn, lewd-horn, 
Followed by the prude-horn, bleak and squeaking: — 
(Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.) 
Here comes the hod-horn, plod-horn, sod-horn, 
Nevermore-to-roam-horn, loam-horn, home-horn, 
(Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.) 



plosiveness 



1/ 



Far awa v the Rachel- Jane, "^^ ^^ ^^,^^ PI 

' sung well-niqh 

'Not defeated by the horns, in a whisper^ 

Sings amid a hedge of thorns; 

""Love and life, 

Eternal youth — 

Sweet, sweet, siveet, sweet! 

Dew and glory, 

Love and truth, 

Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweetH 

While smoke-black freights on the double-tracked rail- ^^ef fStir 

road, and faster 

Driven as though by the foul-fiend's ox-goad, 
Screaming to the west coast, screaming to the east, 
Carry off a har\^est, bring back a feast, 
Har\Tsting machinery and harness for the beast. 



70 NEW VOICES 

The hand-cars whiz, and rattle on the rails; 
The sunlight flashes on the tin dinner-pails. 
I'Itt -Sr^^^w' And then, in an instant, 

with increasing ' ' 

deliberation Ye modern men, 

Behold the procession once again! 
Splosi'veSeS''°^ Listen to the iron horns, ripping, racking! 

Listen to the wise-horn, desperate-to-advise horn, 
Listen to the fast-horn, kill-horn, blast-horn . . . 
Sd^welSfgh in P""' ^^^3^ the Rachel-Jane, 

a whisper Not defeated by the horns, 

Sings amid a hedge of thorns: — 
^''Love and life, 
Eternal youth — 
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet! 
Dew and glory, 
Love and Truth — • 
Sweet, sweet, sweet, swect!^^ 
The mufflers open on a score of cars 
With wonderful thunder, 
CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, 
1^^^^ CRACK-CRACK, CRACK-CRACK, 
with a snapping CRACK-CRACK-CRACK, .... 
endSnTan- Listen to the gold-horn .... 

guorous chant Qld-hom .... 

Cold-horn .... 

And all of the tunes, till the night comes down 

On hay-stack, and ant-hill, and wind-bitten town. 

Sacti ^the same Then far in the west, as in the beginning, 

whispered tune Dim in the distance, sweet in retreating, 

fines ^ ^^^ ^^ Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn, 

Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn . . 

b?^Ln1?^°" They are hunting the goals that they understand :- 
sonorously, Sau Francisco and the brown sea-sand, 

Slorous'whlsie?" My goal is the mystery the beggars win. 

I am caught in the web the night-winds spin. 

The edge of the wheat-ridge speaks to me; 

I talk with the leaves of the mulberry tree. 

And now I hear, as I sit all alone 

In the dusk, by another big Santa-Fe stone. 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 71 

The souls of the tall corn gathering round, 

And the gay little souls of the grass in the ground. 

Listen to the tale the cotton-wood tells 

Listen to the wind-mills singing o'er the wells. 

Listen to the whisthng flutes without price 

Of myriad prophets out of paradise .... 

Hearken to the wonder that the night-air carries. whis^ered"tune 

Listen . . . to . . . the . . . whisper ... as the Rachei- 

r\r ii • • r • • Jane song — but 

Of . . . the . . . prairie . . . fames very slowly 

Singing over the fairy plain: 
"Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet! 
Love and glory, stars and rain, 
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet!" 

Vachel Lindsay 



COMING TO PORT 

Our motion on the soft still misty river 
Is like rest ; and Hke the hours of doom 
That rise and follow one another ever. 
Ghosts of sleeping battle cruisers loom 
And languish quickly in the liquid gloom. 

From watching them your eyes in tears are gleaming, 
And your heart is still; and like a sound 
In silence is your stillness in the streaming 
Of Hght-whispered laughter all around. 
Where happy passengers are homeward bound. 

Their sunny journey is in safety ending, 

But for you no journey has an end; 

The tears that to your eyes their light are lending 

Shine in softness to no waiting friend; 

Beyond the search of any eye they tend. 

There is no nest for the unresting fever 
Of your passion, yearning, hungry- veined; 
There is no rest nor blessedness forever 
That can clasp you, quivering and pained, 
Whose eyes burn forward to the unattained. 



72 NEW VOICES 

Like time, and like the river's fateful flowing, 
Flowing though the ship has come to rest, 
Your love is passing through the mist and going, 
Going infinitely from your breast. 
Surpassing time on its immortal quest. 

The ship draws softly to the place of waiting, 

All flush forward with a joyful aim. 

And while their hands with happy hands are mating, 

Lips are laughing out a happy name — 

You pause, and pass among them like a flame. 

Max Eastman 



MONOTONE 

The monotone of the rain is beautiful, 
And the sudden rise and slow relapse 
Of the long multitudinous rain. 

The sun on the hills is beautiful, 
Or a captured sunset, sea-flung, 
Bannered with fire and gold. 

A face I know is beautiful — 
With fire and gold of sky and sea. 
And the peace of long warm rain. 

Carl Sandburg 



THE BOMBARDMENT 

Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the city. It stops a mo- 
ment on the carved head of Saint John, then shdes on again, slipping 
and trickling over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit 
of a gargoyle, and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathe- 
dral square. Where are the people, and why does the fretted steeple 
sweep about in the sky? Boom! The sound swings against the rain. 
Boom again! After it, only water rushing in the gutters, and the tur- 
mofl from the spout of the gargoyle. Silence. Ripples and mutters. 
Boom! 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 73 

The room is damp, but warm. Little flashes swarm about from the 
firelight. The lustres of the chandeHer are bright, and clusters of 
rubies leap in the bohemian glasses on the etagere. Her hands are 
restless, but the white masses of her hair are quite still. Boom! 
Will it ever cease to torture, this iteration! Boom! The vibration shat- 
ters a glass on the etagere. It lies there, formless and glowing, with all 
its crimson gleams shot out of pattern, spilled, flowing red, blood- 
red. A thin bell-note pricks through the silence. A door creaks. The 
old lady speaks: "Victor, clear away that broken glass." "Alas! 
Madame, the bohemian glass!" "Yes, Victor, one hundred years ago 
my father brought it — " Boom! The room shakes, the servitor quakes. 
Another goblet shivers and breaks. Boom! 

It rustles at the window-pane, the smooth, streaming rain, and he is 
shut within its clash and murmur. Inside is his candle, his table, his 
ink, his pen, and his dreams. He is thinking, and the walls are pierced 
with beams of sunshine, shpping through yoimg green. A fountain 
tosses itself up at the blue sky, and through the spattered water in the 
basin he can see copper carp, lazily floating among cold leaves. A 
wind-harp in a cedar-tree grieves and whispers, and words blow into 
his brain, bubbled, iridescent, shooting up like flowers of fire, higher 
and higher. Boom! The flame-flowers snap on their slender stems. 
The fountain rears up in long broken spears of disheveUed water and 
flattens into the earth. Boom! And there is only the room, the 
table, the candle, and the sHding rain. Again, Boom! — Boom! — 
Boom! He stuffs his fingers into his ears. He sees corpses, and cries 
out in fright. Boom! It is night, and they are shelling the city! 
Boom! Boom! 

A child wakes and is afraid, and weeps in the darkness. What has 
made the bed shake? " Mother, where are you? I am awake." "Hush, 
my DarHng, I am here." "But, Mother, something so queer hap- 
pened, the room shook." Boom! "Oh! What is it? What is the 
matter?" Boom! "Where is Father? I am so afraid." Boom! The 
child sobs and shrieks. The house trembles and creaks. Boom! 

Retorts, globes, tubes, and phials he shattered. All his trials oozing 
across the floor. The life that was his choosing, lonely, urgent, goaded 
by a hope, all gone. A weary man in a ruined laboratory, that is his 
Story. Boom! Gloom and ignorance, and the jig of drunken brutes. 



74 NEW VOICES 

Diseases like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of slime. 
Wails from people burying their dead. Through the windov/, he can 
see the rocking steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead of the roof, and 
the sky tears apart on a spike of flame. Up the spire, behind the lac- 
ings of stone, zigzagging in and out of the carved tracings, squirms 
the fire. It spouts Uke yellow wheat from the gargoyles, coils round 
the head of Saint John, and aureoles him in Ught. It leaps into the 
night and hisses against the rain. The Cathedral is a burning stain 
on the white, wet night. 

Boom! The Cathedral is a torch, and the houses next to it begin 
to scorch. Boom ! The bohemian glass on the etagere is no longer there. 
Boom ! A stalk of flame sways against the red damask curtains. The 
old lady cannot walk. She watches the creeping stalk and counts. 
Boom ! — Boom ! — Boom ! 

The poet rushes into the street, and the rain wraps him in a sheet 
of silver. But it is threaded with gold and powdered with scarlet 
beads. The city burns. Quivering, spearing, thrusting, lapping, 
streaming, run the flames. Over roofs, and walls, and shops, and 
staUs. Smearing its gold on the sky, the fire dances, lances itself 
through the doors, and lisps and chuckles along the floors. 

The child wakes again and screams at the yellow petalled flower 
flickering at the window. The little red lips of flame creep along the 
ceihng beams. 

The old man sits among his broken experiments and looks at the 
burning Cathedral. Now the streets are swarming with people. They 
seek shelter and crowd into the cellars. They shout and call, and over 
all, slowly and without force, the rain drops into the city. Boom! 
And the steeple crashes down among the people. Boom! Boom, 
again ! The water rushes along the gutters. The fire roars and mutters. 
Boom! 

Amy Lowell 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 

THE VIRGIN'S SLUMBER SONG 

Shoon-a-shoon, 
I sing no psalm 

Little Man 
Although I am 
Out of David's 

House and Clann. 
Shoon-a-shoon 
I sing no psalm. 

(Hush-a-hoo, 

Blowing of pine; 
Hush-a-hoo, 

Lowing of kine: 
Hush-a-hoo, 

Though even in sleep, 
His ear can hear 

The shamrock's creep.) 

Moons and moons 
And suns galore, 
■ Match their gold 
On Slumber's shore, 
With your ghttering 

Eyes that hold. 
Moons and moons 
And suns galore. 

(Hush-a-hoo, 

Oceans of earth; 
Hush-a-hoo, 

Motions of mirth: 
Hush-a-hoo, 

Though over all, 
His ear can hear 

The planets fall.) 

O'er and o'er 
And under all. 

Every star 
Is now a ball, 



75 



76 NEW VOICES 

For Your little 

Hands that are 
O'er and o'er 
And under all. 

(Hush-a-hoo, 

Whirring of wings; 
Hush-a-hoo, 

Stirring of strings: 
Hush-a-hoo, 

Though in slumber deep, 
His ear can hear 

My Song of Sleep.) 

Francis Carlin 

SEAL LULLABY* 

Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, 

And black aie the waters that sparkled so green. 
The moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find us 

At rest in the hollows that rustle between. 
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow; 

Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! 
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee. 

Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas. 

Rudyard Kipling 

THE LISTENERS 

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller, 

Knocking on the moonlit door; 
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses 

Of the forest's ferny floor; 
And a bird flew up out of the turret, 

Above the Traveller's head. 
And he smote upon the door again a second time; 

"Is there anybody there?" he said. 
But no one descended to the Traveller; 

No head from the leaf -fringed sill 

* Taken from "The Jungle Book" by permission of The Centura' Co. 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 77 

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, 

Where he stood perplexed and still. 
But only a host of phantom listeners 

That dwelt in the lone house then 
Stood Ustening in the quiet of the moonlight 

To that voice from the world of men : 
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, 

That goes down to the empty hall, 
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken 

By the lonely Traveller's call. 
And he felt in his heart their strangeness, 

Their stillness answering his cry, 
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 

'Neath the starred and leafy sky; 
For he suddenly smote on the door, even 

Louder, and lifted his head : — 
"Tell them I came, and no one answered, 

That I kept my word," he said. 
Never the least stir made the Hsteners, 

Though every word he spake 
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house 

From the one man left awake: 
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, 

And the sound of iron on stone, 
And how the silence surged softly backward, 

When the plunging hoofs were gone. 

Walter de la Mare 

REMEMBRANCE: GREEK FOLK SONG 

Not unto the forest — not unto the forest, my lover! 
Why do you lead me to the forest! 

Joy is where the temples are. 

Lines of dancers swinging far. 

Drums and lyres and viols in the town — 
It is dark in the forest. 

And the flapping leaves will blind me 

And the clinging vines will bind me 

And the thorny rose-boughs tear my saffron gown — 
And I fear the forest. 



78 NEW VOICES 

Not unto the forest — not Mito the forest, my lover! 
There was one once who led me to the forest. 

Hand in hand v/e wandered mute 

Where was neither lyre nor flute 

Little stars were bright above the dusk 
{There was wind in the forest) 

And the thickets of wild rose 

Breathed across our lips locked close 

Dizzy perfumings of spikenard and of musk . . . 
I am tired of the forest! 

Not unto the forest — not unto the forest, O my lover — 
Take me from the silence of the forest! 

I will love you by the light 

And the throb of drums at night 

And the echoing of laughter in my ears, 
Btit here in the forest 

I am still, remembering 

A forgotten, useless thing, 

And my eyelids are locked down for fear of tears . . . 
There is memory in the forest. 

Margaret Widdemer 

THE BACCHANTE TO HER BABE 

Scherzo 

Come, sprite, and dance! The sun is up, 
The wind runs laughing down the sky 
That brims with morning like a cup. 
Sprite, we must race him, 
. We must chase him — 
You and I! 

And skim across the fuzzy heather — 
You and joy and I together 
WhirUng by! 

You merry little roll of fat! — 
Made warm to kiss, and smooth to pat, 
And round to toy with, like a cub; 
To put one's nozzle in and rub 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 79 

And breath you in like breath of kine, 

Like juice of vine, 

That sets my morning heart a-tingHng, 

Dancing, jingUng, 

All the glad abandon mingUng 

Of wind and wine! 



Sprite, you are love, and you are joy, 

A happiness, a dream, a toy, 

A god to laugh with. 

Love to chaff with. 

The sun come down in tangled gold. 

The moon to kiss, and spring to hold. 

There was a time once, long ago. 

Long — oh, long since ... I scarcely know. 

Almost I had forgot . . . 

There was a time when you were not, 

You merry sprite, save as a strain, 

The strange dull pain 

Of green buds swelling 

In warm, straight dweUing 

That must burst to the April rain. 

A little heavy I was then. 

And dull — and glad to rest. And when 

The travail came 

In searing flame . . . 

But, sprite, that was so long ago! — 

A century! — I scarcely know. 

Almost I had forgot 

When you were not. 

So, little sprite, come dance with me! 

The sun is up, the wind is free! 

Come now and trip it, 

Romp and skip it, 

Earth is young and so are we. 

Sprite, you and I will dance together 

On the heather, 



8o NEW VOICES 

Glad with all the procreant earth, 

With all the fruitage of the trees, 

And golden pollen on the breeze, 

With plants that bring the grain to birth, 

With beast and bird, 

Feathered and furred, 

With youth and hope and life and love. 

And joy thereof — 

While we are part of all, we two — 

For my glad burgeoning in you! 

So, merry Httle roll of fat. 

Made warm to kiss and smooth to pat 

And round to toy with, like a cub. 

To put one's nozzle in and rub, 

My god to laugh with. 

Love to chaff with. 

Come and dance beneath the sky. 

You and I! 

Look out with those round wondering eyes. 

And squirm, and gurgle — and grow wise! 

Eunice Tietjens 

THE MOST-SACRED MOUNTAIN 

Space, and the twelve clean winds of heaven, 

And this sharp exultation, like a cry, after the slow six thousand feet 

of climbing! 
This is Tai Shan, the beautiful, the most holy. 

Below my feet the foot-hills nestle, brown with flecks of green; and 
lower down the flat brown plain, the floor of earth, stretches 
away to blue infinity. 

Beside me in this airy space the temple roofs cut their slow curves 
against the sky. 

And one black bird circles above the void. 

Space, and the twelve clean winds are here; 

And with them broods eternity — a swift, white peace, a presence 
manifest. 



ORGANIC RHYTHM 8i 

The rhythm ceases here. Time has no place. 
This is the end that has no end. 

Here when Confucius came, a half a thousand years before the Naz- 
arene, he stepped with me, thus into timelessness. 

The stone beside us waxes old, the carven stone that says: On this 
spot once Confucius stood and felt the smallness of the world below. 

Eunice Tietjens 

SONG OF THE FULL CATCH 

Here's good wind, here's sweet wind, 
Here's good wind and my woman calls me! 
Straight she stands there by the pine-tree, 
Faithful waits she by the cedar. 
She will smile and reach her hands 
When she sees my thousand salmon! 
Here's good wind and my woman calls me. 

Here's clear water, here's swift water, 
Here's bright water and my woman waits me! 
She will call me from the sea's mouth — 
Sweet her pine-bed when the morning 
Lights my canoe and the river ends! 
Here's good wind, here's swift water. 
Strong as love when my woman calls me ! 

Constance Lindsay Skinner 

LITTLE THINGS 

There's nothing very beautiful and nothing very gay 

About the rush of faces in the town by day. 

But a light tan cow in a pale green mead, 

That is very beautiful, beautiful indeed. . . 

And the soft March wind, and the low March mist 

Are better than kisses in the dark street kissed. , . 

The fragrance of the forest when it wakes at dawn, 

The fragrance of a trim green village lawn, 

The hearing of the murmur of the rain at play — 

These things are beautiful, beautiful as day! 



S2 NEW VOICES 

And I shan't stand waiting for bve or scorn 
When the feast is laid for a day new-born. . . 
Oh, better let the little things I loved when httle 
Return when the heart finds the great things brittle; 
And better is a temple made of bark and thong 
Than a tall stone temple that may stand too long. 

Orrick Johns 



4 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS 

Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image. 

Ex. XX. 4. 

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the 
evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I 
have no pleasure in them. 

While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars be not dark- 
ened, nor the clouds return after the rain : 

In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the 
strong men shall bov/ themselves, and the grinders cease because they 
are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened. 

And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the 
grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of a bird, and all the 
daughters of musick shall be brought low; 

Also, when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall 
be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper 
shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long 
home, and the mourners go about the streets: 

Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or 
the pitcher broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. 

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit 
shall return mito God who gave it. 

Ecc. xii. 1-7. 

As we all know, the ancient Hebrews were forbidden by their 
religion to make graven images of persons or animals. This 
may have been the first Puritanical prohibition against the arts 
of painting and sculpture. But unlike many of our Puritanical 
prohibitions against the arts, it may have served a good pur- 
pose. The Hebrews were a small people, numerically, living in a 
small country, surrounded by other peoples whose worship was 
sensual and crude. Perhaps they worshipped Jahveh more 
spiritually and cleanly because they were not permitted to make 



S4 NEW VOICES 

an image of Him, or of the creatures made in His image. Per- 
haps that is one reason why the Hebrews gave the world a 
monotheistic reUgion, a rehgion spiritually perceived. We must 
remember that the ancient world had no science comparable 
to ours, and strong enough to strike a lance of light through the 
dark fabric of ignorance and superstition, and to shatter the 
gross, material gods behind it. And for this reason, and for 
other reasons, the development of monotheistic religion might 
have come much later in history if the ancient Hebrews had been 
allowed to make graven images and worship them after the 
manner of other nations of their time. 

Now in all strong races the desire to give form and substance 
to ideas and emotions is strong and keenly felt. The Hebrews 
were no exception to this rule, and the images which they were 
not allowed to make with their fingers they made with their 
minds and gave to the world in a literature strong and clear and 
beautiful. The reader can not find, I suppose, in all of the Htera- 
ture written or rewritten in our language, a more excellent de- 
scription of old age than that quoted from Ecclesiastes. It is a 
superb description because it is a universal truth stated in sym- 
bols that are absolutely true and appropriate. The majesty of 
these metaphors has given this passage everlasting life. 

Let us take a single verse of this chapter and translate it into 
plain prose statement. Instead of saying "In the days when the 
keepers of the house shall tremble," let us say, "In the days 
when a man's arms have grown weak"; instead of "and the 
strong men shall bow themselves," let us say, "when the legs 
are bent "; instead of "and the grinders shall cease because they 
are few," "when a man is losing his teeth and his abihty to 
masticate"; and instead of "and those that look out of the 
windows be darkened," "when a man grows bHnd." Having 
done this we find that we have stated a scientific fact. But we 
have stated it quite unfeelingly. And therefore, when we say 
it in this fashion, we awaken no sense of wistfulness, fear, tender- 
ness, regret or compassion in the reader. Whereas the great 
original, by its transcendent beauty and truth imaginatively 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS 8$ 

expressed, reaches our minds and hearts and abides with us. 
It induces sympathy. 

Images and symbols, then, are valuable in literature because 
they present truth far more concisely, vividly, memorably and 
emotionally than Hteral statement. 

The more we think about it the more certain we become that 
the use of images and symbols in poetry has an importance that 
is far more than hterary or decorative. It is structural. It 
takes issue from a poet's realization of life. The sense impres- 
sions which go into the making of a poet's images and symbols 
are the result of what his nimble five wits have taught him. 
True images and symbols are not worked out intellectually 
and tacked upon the surface of a poem superficially, as a ribbon 
bow is tacked to a piece of lingerie in a department store. Like 
good rhythms, good images and symbols are the direct and 
truthful record of a poet's emotions and ideas and are capable 
of giving the reader a share in these ideas. 

Whenever images and symbols have been devised by the "sur- 
face intellect" for the superficial adornment of a work of art and 
for the love of mere cleverness, analysis is likely to reveal weak- 
ness and aesthetic insincerity. Sometimes poems by very clever 
moderns fall short of being good poems simply because the sjnn- 
bols used in them could never have been realized and profoundly 
felt and are, therefore, rather more clever than true. Says 
Wallace Stevens, in " Tattoo" 

"The light is like a spider. 

It crawls over the water. 

It crawls over the edges of the snow. 

It crawls under your eyelids 

And spreads its webs there — 

Its two webs." 

Read casually that sounds well enough. But it will not bear 
analysis. A spider is a small, dark, rayed object moving in 
darts and jerks. Is Hght a spider in form, color, texture, move- 
ment, power? Do spiders crawl over water, over the edges of 



86 NEW VOICES 

snow, under our eyelids? It sounds improbable. To read these 
lines thoughtfully is to be convinced that light is not at all hke a 
spider. It is difficult to conceive of any interpretation of the 
poem that would reveal truth in this symbol. 

Let us compare it with another httle poem, by Carl Sandburg. 
The poem is called ''Fog" and the new symbol used to make us 
feel a sense of the fog is what makes all the sum and substance 
of it. 

"The fog comes 
on little cat feet. 

It sits looking 
over harbor and city 
on silent haunches 
and then moves on." 

Evidently Mr. Sandburg wishes to give us a sense of the 
quietness that is always in a fog. Nothing else but a cat moves 
so silently as a fog. The symbohsm is daring, but it is quite 
true and has been truthfully felt. If we know what a fog is like, 
we can feel it for ourselves. It is whimsical, to be sure, and these 
lines have nothing more to recommend them than the honesty 
and suggestive power of this S3mibol or image. But having that, 
they justify themselves. 

All images and symbols used in poetry can be tested by the 
reader. For a lover of poetry with a sympathetic imagination 
wiU be able to discriminate between sincere craftsmanship and 
that which is spurious. He will learn for himself why a night- 
ingale is not a real bird in the poem of a man who has never 
heard one sing, but feels called upon to maunder about a night- 
ingale's song. He will learn why an English primrose, beloved 
of Wordsworth, becomes a false flower in a poem by an American 
mimic who has never seen one, who would be wiser to write 
about goldenrod. He will understand why it is a heinous 
aesthetic sin to bring heather into a poem as a rhyme for weather, 
when the word is not only irrelevant, but only half understood 
through the hterature of others. And if he will contrast enough 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS 87 

good poems with enough bad ones, the reader will come to feel 
that poets capable of such artistic immorahties are only clowns 
wearing laurel wreaths that they have snatched from brows more 
reverend than their own. 

The poet's purpose is not utiHtarian, to be sure. He is no 
lawyer making a contract. But he must be as loyal to his own 
code as the lawyer to the law. It is his power and privilege to 
surround facts with beauty, or with such impressive quaUties 
as are relevant to those facts. But he must serve as a priest 
celebrates a sacrament. His images and symbols must be the 
true outward and visible signs of the grace given him. 

Now the poets in the period immediately preceding our own 
used images and symbols — poets always have used them, for 
it is well nigh impossible to make a readable poem without them 
— but they were not content simply to show the picture and sug- 
gest the meaning. At least, many of them were not content with 
this. They wanted to explain their own symbols. They wanted 
to morahze with them. They poured a good deal of water into 
the nectar they offered us. And sometimes it tasted like a thin 
and feeble gruel. 

In our time, however, the best poets have given emphatic evi- 
dence of the belief that it is almost enough, if not quite enough, 
to present images and symbols adequately and let them work 
their own spell. This accounts, in part, for the brevity of much 
of our contemporary poetry and for the consciseness of it. It 
accounts, in part, for the beauty of it. But it makes it necessary 
for images and symbols to be, in and of themselves, true and 
valuable in relation to the mood of the poem, since the poet will 
not explain them or direct our attention to their meaning. 

Let us read and discuss first a few poems in which mental 
images are used simply for the sake of the picture they present 
and for the sense impressions which can be shared with the 
reader. And then let us read and discuss other poems in which 
images are used for their value as symbols. 

The poets who have called themselves Imagists are more 
emphatic than other poets in affirming their belief in the use of 



88 NEW VOICES 

images. They are as emphatic as it is possible to be and keep 
sanity. Briefly stated, this is their ideal of what a poem should 
be: — an image, or series of related images, presented in organic 
rhythm and suggesting a mood. For the simple and direct 
lyric cry, for the philosophical suggestions that show the soul 
of the folk, for the plain earth- wisdom of simple men and women, 
for that proud and prescient sense of the meaning of Hfe which 
has been the glory of Enghsh poetry in the work of many masters, 
the Imagists seem to care very Httle. And their best work is 
often done when they forget to be Imagists and become poets. 
But there is a measure of truth in their credo. And it has value 
as an antithetical remedy for the ills of Victorian diffuseness, 
vagueness and sentimentality. Almost any of the poems of 
H. D. are admirable illustrations of Imagism. The poem quoted 
at the end of this chapter, "Sea Gods," depends for its effect 
upon our ability to see and smell and feel and share intellectually 
what is told in it. 

"But we bring violets, 
Great masses, single, sweet. 
Wood-violets, stream-violets, 
Violets from a wet marsh. 

This lyric, and many of the other lyrics by H. D., Richard 
Aldington, and the other Imagists, have undeniable beauty, 
for which we should be thankful. But we do not want all poetry 
to be of this kind. We need a more robust spiritual food. We 
can not live on candied flowers. And Imagists should use more 
verbs if they would stir us deeply. On the other hand, although 
it is clear that, if the tenets of Imagism became dogmas for any 
great number of poets, we should need a reaction against them 
as much as ever we needed reaction against the minor Victorians, 
we should not allow ourselves to belittle their very real achieve- 
ments. Imagists are seldom guilty of trite phrases and dull 
similes. They have brought new color into poetry and new im- 
pressions of the beauty of the external world. 

Many critics have come to believe that Amy Lowell is the 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS 89 

greatest of the Imagists, indeed more than an Imagist. Cer- 
tainly she can do marvellous things with images and symbols. 
Like Ahohab, son of Ahisamech, she is "an engraver, and a 
cunning workman, and an embroiderer in blue, and in purple, 
and in scarlet, and fine Hnen." Other poets must lay the floor 
plans and rear the props that uphold our tabernacle of poetry; 
others must fashion an ark to keep sacred forever the covenant 
that we make with beauty and virtue. Others, to speak more 
briefly, must be our reaHsts and ideahsts. Miss Lowell is pri- 
marily a cunning workman, an artificer in brilliant colors, an 
engraver of fine designs. 

No one can rightly evaluate Miss Lowell's work who will not 
accept the fact that she is always a conscious artist. She goes 
far afield, sometimes, for the materials of her poems. But she 
selects them with care. She uses the lives of people who live 
on New England farms to-day, or the lives of quaint swash- 
bucklers who lived a century ago and half a world away. She 
shows pictures of strange and vivid things that she has seen in a 
wide and vivid world. She makes these pictures out of the jux- 
taposition of odd trifles with scents and hues and textures that 
she likes. And in her best work she gives us frosty designs in 
thought as clear as glass, flashing patterns of feeling as warmly 
colored as glossy skeins of embroidery silk — blue and purple 
and scarlet, silver and gold. She distills sensations that sting 
like fiery liqueur. She threads together impressions as frail 
as a flutter of old lace. She is a poet of vigorous, penetrative 
and incessantly communicative imagination. 

In her "Malmaison" and " 1777," as in all of the poems in her 
recent book, "Can Grande's Castle," Miss Lowell has given us 
clearly and copiously imagined pictures from history. Here is an 
admirable picture of an Enghsh inn taken from her poem, 
"Hedge Island." It is simply a series of related images, but 
we see the picture. We have been in that inn! 

"A long oak corridor. Then a burst of sunshine through 
leaded windows, spangling a floor, iris-tinting rounds of beef, 
and flaked veal pies, and rose-marbled hams, and great succu- 



90 NEW VOICES 

lent cheeses. Wine-glasses take it and break it, and it quivers 
away over the table-cloth in faint rainbows; or, straight and sud- 
den, stamps a startHng silver whorl on the pohshed side of a 
teapot of hot bohea. A tortoise-shell cat naps between red 
geraniums, and myrtle sprigs tap the stuccoed wall, gently 
blowing to and fro." 

This is the Imagist method, just the same method used in tlie 
poem by H. D. from which we quoted. But this poem is a 
narrative and that was a lyric. 

To be sure, Miss Lowell's rampant imagination sometimes 
runs away with itself for sheer joy in the clatter it can make in 
passing. When this happens she gives us lurid little bits of 
clever mental agony like ''Red Slippers." Or perhaps she finds 
forms and qualities in Nature for which Nature herself would 
seek in vain. In a recent poem about the war and the sugar- 
beet industry she made delightful red and yellow and globular 
pictures of a vegetable that looks like a long, grayish turnip. 
But since her imagination yields the real moonshine of poetry 
we should be willing to forgive the occasional babble. For a 
magical imagination Miss Lowell assuredly has. 

None of her poems is a better illustration of the Imagist 
method than her "Cornucopia of Red and Green Comfits," 
a "Phantasm" of the great war recently pubUshed in The In- 
dependent. It is also typical of her genius. 

It sometimes happens that poets who are not Imagists write 
poems that have a beauty of the kind Imagists often seek in 
vain, because they seek too intellectually and self-consciously. 
Such a poem is "Silver," by Walter de la Mare. It is a color 
study, dehghting us as a fine painting would. It has the ad- 
ditional charm of a cool, liquid rhythm. Few poems of our day 
have so great a beauty of imagery. For every image is true. 
Anyone can see the same thing at the right place and time. 

" Couched in his kennel, like a log, 

With paws of silver sleeps the dog; 

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep 

Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep." 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS 91 

This is all said in magical words. Millions of men and women 
and children have seen this silver symphony on moonUt nights. 
Now it is poetry. 

In his ''Old Woman of The Roads" Padraic Colum uses 
images in a lyrical fashion of his own to express the homely 
emotions of a poor and homeless old woman. They are all true 
images of things that belong in simple cottages and hold the 
'love of simple women everywhere. The "white and blue and 
speckled store" of "shining delph," the "hearth and stool and 
all," the "clock with weights and chains/' the "pile of turf," 
are all pictures of the desire in the old woman's heart. They 
come very near to being symbols. 

Francis Carlin's quatrain, "The Cuckoo," is good imagery, 
deftly made of sound and color. 

"A Sound but from an Echo made 
And a body wrought of colored Shade, 
Have blent themselves into a bird 
But seldom seen and scarcely heard." 

Very beautiful poetry can be made by the use of images. But 
a more subtle skill is required of the poet who would make us 
perceive, through his imagery, something greater and more im- 
portant than the images presented. And the beauty of sym- 
bolism leads the human spirit farther than the beauty of imagery. 
Many of the best contemporary poets have written poems re- 
markable for beautiful symboHsm, poems that are, in reahty, 
large, compound, and subtly ampUfied metaphors. One of the 
most notable of these is Rupert Brooke's "The Great Lover." 

It is descriptive of the hearty love of life, nothing more difficult 
and complex than that. And Rupert Brooke, who was a very 
keen and sentient poet, has used admirably chosen images of 
familiar things to symbolize his theme. When he enumerated 
the many things that made life blessed for him, he was speaking 
truly, doubtless, of each one of them. But he was doing more 
than that. In the strongest way in the world, and in a very 
beautiful way, he was saying over and over again that he loved 



92 NEW VOICES 

life and found it good. This poem may well be considered the 
loveliest thing he ever wrote, although patriotism has made his 
sonnets more popular. Here is a short passage which gives but 
a taste of the flavor of the whole: 

"These have I loved: 

White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, 
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; 
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust 
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; 
Rainbows; and the blue, bitter smoke of wood;" 

William H. Davies is another Enghsh poet who has written 
poems remarkable for their beautiful symbolism. In one famous 
little lyric he makes the thunderstorm the symbol of his own 
moods. In another poem, which is a brilhant narrative about 
two women whose lives were none too good, he uses the bird of 
paradise — an amazingly accurate, vivid and ironical symbol — 
to stand for something sacred which poor Nell Barnes had loved 
and cherished. 

"Not for the world! Take care! 

Don't touch that bird of paradise, 
Perched on the bed post there!" 

A lesser artist might have explained in detail just what the bird 
of paradise meant to poor Nell. He might have moralized about 
the state of her conscience. He might have been sentimental. 
He might have wetted the feathers of his own symbol with his 
own tears and washed out their lovely color. But with fine, 
clean, sharp art Mr. Davies does none of these things. He lets 
the symbol stand out clearly and arouses in us a more profound 
pity than could ever have been aroused by many stanzas of 
explanation. 

Still another fine use of symbols is to be found in ''Frost To- 
night" by Edith M. Thomas. The symbols themselves are old, 
frost meaning death, flowers meaning the harvest of life, but 
they are used with a grave and sincere simpUcity which makes 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS 93 

them the poet's own. For this is quite enough to prevent the 
possibiHty of a trite effect, and to insure a sense of beautiful 
authenticity. 

Similarly Adelaide Crapsey uses an old symbol, the wind, 
meaning fear and sorrow, but uses it masterfully in one of her 
Httle 'Xinquains," " Night Winds." 

"The old, 

Old winds that blew 

When chaos was, what do 

They tell the clattered trees that I 

Should weep?" 

The truth seems to be that through all the ages the same sym- 
bols have been used again and again. Wherever men and 
women have been led by Hfe to think and feel certain things in a 
certain way, they have used certain symbols as the inevitable 
way of expressing themselves. In hot countries everlasting heat 
is the symbol of damnation; in cold countries, everlasting cold. 
Again and again the seasons, spring, summer, autumn and winter 
are made to mean birth, growth, maturity, death. A winding 
river is life. The seed of the man is the child. The banner is the 
nation. The summit is success. The uphill climb is eft'ort. 
The tree is the race, the family, the strong man. 

The use of the tree as a symbol of the strong man is par- 
ticularly noticeable in poems about our American strong man, 
Abraham Lincoln. Many poems liken Lincoln to a tree. John 
Gould Fletcher calls him a ''gaunt scraggly pine." The phrase 
is meaningful. Edwin Markham, writing with a similar idea 
in mind, says: 

"And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down 
As when a kingly cedar green with boughs 
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, 
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky." 

This is probably the best of all poems about Lincoln. And it is 
a very fine study for those interested in symbolism. For in it 



94 NEW VOICES 

the qualities of natural objects, rocks, rain, and other works 
of external nature, are used as symbols of spiritual qualities 
in the great man. 

If such symbols are old, as old as the ages, how is it that they 
retain their strength and freshness? The answer to that ques- 
tion is one word — Realization. They will seem trite and inef- 
fectual, these symbols, or any symbols, if they are used arti- 
ficially and insincerely or as the result of feeble, puerile, inef- 
fectual realization. But when a poet feels the force of any sym- 
bol in relation to his ov^^n mood and emotion, the symbol will 
take, through the medium of his personaUty, a new individuality 
and authenticity. To be insincere in the world of action is to be 
less than ethical. To be insincere in the world of poetry is to be 
less than artistic. 

Just before the war a book was published purporting to be a 
book of poems by founders of a new school of poetry. It was 
called "Spectra" and signed by collaborators, Emanuel Morgan 
and Anne Knish. In it were cleverly preposterous verses — a 
sort of symbohc gibberish — which deceived many clever per- 
sons — clever persons, mind — into taking the book seriously. 
Well known poets and well known critics wrote about that book 
and even wrote to the authors of it, telhng them that the poor, 
stupid old world would understand them some day. But in- 
sincerity of conception and execution was so patent in every 
Hne that one wonders how anyone could have been deceived. 
Certainly the stupid old World was not deceived, although it 
howled with laughter at lines like the following: 

"Two cocktails around a smile, 

A grape-fruit after grace, 
Flowers in an aisle 

. . . Were your face!" 

The stupid old World was right. Laughter was what the authors 
longed for and expected. "Spectra" was simply an elaborate 
spoof, a book made in ridicule of the insincerities of many of the 
"saffron schools." The attempt to show by exaggeration how 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS 95 

absurd such literary insincerities can become was worth while. 
It is a noteworthy fact that the wise — in current opinion — were 
deceived. The simple and sincere were not. "Spectra" was 
written by two very good poets, Arthur Davison Ficke and Wit- 
ter Bynner. 

We have often been told that the masters of symboHsm come 
from the Orient. This may be because the making of strong 
symbols is a task for leisure and meditation, and the Orient 
loves leisure and meditation as the Occident loves action and 
thought. 

But whatever the reason may be, it is fairly probable that no 
poet of our time is a greater master of symboHsm than Sir 
Rabindranath Tagore. As has been said in a previous chapter, 
symboHsm is the very structure and S3rnimetry of design in his 
poems written in English. We can pick up his books and open 
them almost at random, to find strong, sure S3miboHsm on any 
page. 

"The current in which I drifted ran rapid and strong when I was 
young. The spring breeze was spendthrift of itself, the trees were on 
fire with flowers; and the birds never slept from singing." 

Pages could give no better idea of youth. There he goes on to 
to say, 

"Now that youth has ebbed and I am stranded on the bank, I 
can hear the deep music of aU things, and the sky opens to me its 
heart of stars." 

Pages could give no better idea of age with its spiritual compen- 
sations. 

The poetry of Kahlil Gibran, too, is almost entirely a poetry 
of symboHsm. His poems are parables, not designs in rhyme, 
rhythm or imagery, although his rhythms are clear and pleas- 
ing. In his book, "The Madman," we have the best parables 
that can be found in contemporary poetry. And each may be 
interpreted according to the whimsy of the reader. "The Fox" 
is a sage Httle parable. It may mean ambition — iHusion — the 
usual trend of human life — fate — or what you wiU. 



96 NEW VOICES 

"A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said, 'I will have a 
camel for lunch to-day.' And all morning he went about looking for 
camels. But at noon he saw his shadow again — and he said, ' A mouse 
wiUdo.'" 

But great poets of the Occident are also masters of symbolism. 
One of the most beautiful modern poems made out of a symbol 
is " Cargoes" by John Masefield. Only one symbol is used — the 
cargo. But in terms of that symbol, and in three short stanzas, 
Mr. Masefield describes commerce in three great periods of the 
world's history. And he contrives to give us a sense of the 
world's growth in democracy without saying a word about it. 

The greatest piece of imagery and symbolism in contem- 
porary poetry, however, may well be "The Bull " by Ralph 
Hodgson. This animal epic is warm, brilliant, magnificent. 
Each image in the rich sequence of stanzas has its own glisten- 
ing pomp. All, taken together, are symbols that suggest the 
crescive power of life and the wistfulness of its waning into 
darkness. 

CARGOES 

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, 
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, 

With a cargo of ivory 

And apes and peacocks, 
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet, white wine. 

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, 
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores 

With a cargo of diamonds, 

Emeralds, amethysts, 
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. 

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, 
Butting through the channel in the mad March days 

With a cargo of Tyne coal. 

Road rails, pig lead. 
Firewood, ironware, and cheap tin trays. 



I 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS 97 



THE BULL 

See an old unhappy bull, 
Sick in soul and body both, 
Slouching in the undergrowth 
Of the forest beautiful, 
Banished from the herd he led, 
Bulls and cows a thousand head. 

Cranes and gaudy parrots go 

Up and down the burning sky; 

Tree-top cats purr drowsily 

In the dim-day green below; 

And troops of monkeys, nutting, some, 

All disputing, go and come; 

And things abominable sit 
Picking offal buck or swine, 
On the niess and over it 
Burnished flies and beetles shine, 
And spiders big as bladders lie 
Under hemlocks ten foot high; 

And a dotted serpent curled 
Round and round and round a tree. 
Yellowing its greenery. 
Keeps a watch on all the world. 
All the world and this old bull 
In the forest beautiful. 

Bravely by his fall he came: 

One he led, a bull of blood 

Newly come to lustihood. 

Fought and put his prince to sham.e. 

Snuffed and pawed the prostrate head 

Tameless even while it bled. 

There they left him, every one, 
Left him there without a lick, 



98 NEW VOICES 

Left him for the birds to pick, 
Left him there for carrion, 
Vilely from their bosom cast 
Wisdom, worth and love at last. 

When the lion left his lair 

And roared his beauty through the hills, 

And the vultures pecked their quills 

And flew into the middle air, 

Then this prince no more to reign 

Came to life and lived again. 

He snuffed the herd in far retreat, 
He saw the blood upon the ground, 
And snuffed the burning airs around 
Still with beevish odours sweet, 
While the blood ran down his head 
And his mouth ran slaver red. 

Pity him, this fallen chief. 

All his splendour, all his strength, 

All his body's breadth and length 

Dwindled down with shame and grief, 

Half the bull he was before. 

Bones and leather, nothing more. 

See him standing dewlap-deep 
In the rushes at the lake. 
Surly, stupid, half asleep. 
Waiting for his heart to break 
And the birds to join the flies 
Feasting at his bloodshot eyes, — 

Standing with his head hung down 
In a stupor, dreaming things: 
Green savannas, jungles brown, 
Battlefields and bellowings. 
Bulls undone and Hons dead 
And vultures flapping overhead. 



1 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS 99 

Dreaming things: of days he spent 
With his mother gaunt and lean 
In the valley warm and green, 
Full of baby wonderment, 
Blinking out of silly eyes 
At a hundred mysteries; 

Dreaming over once again 
How he wandered with a throng 
Of bulls and cows a thousand strong, 
Wandered on from plain to plain, 
Up the hill and down the dale, 
Always at his miOther's tail ; 

How he lagged behind the herd. 
Lagged and tottered, weak of limb, 
And she turned and ran to him 
Blaring at the loathly bird 
Stationed always in the skies, 
Waiting for the flesh that dies. 

Dreaming maybe of a day 
When her drained and drying paps 
Turned him to the sweets and saps, 
Richer fountains by the way, 
And she left the bull she bore 
And he looked to her no more; 

And his little frame grew stout, 
And his little legs grew strong. 
And the way was not so long; 
And his httle horns came out. 
And he played at butting trees 
And boulder-stones and tortoises, 

Joined a game of knobby skulls 
With the youngsters of his year. 
All the other little bulls. 
Learning both to bruise and bear. 



loo NEW VOICES 

Learning how to stand a shock 
Like a Httle bull of rock. 

Dreaming of a day less dim, 
Dreaming of a time less far, 
When the faint but certain star 
Of destiny burned clear for him. 
And a fierce and wild unrest 
Broke the quiet of his breast, 

And the gristles of his youth 
Hardened in his comely pow, 
And he came to fighting growth. 
Beat his bull and won his cow, 
And flew his tail and trampled off 
Past the tallest, vain enough. 

And curved about in splendour full 
And curved again and snuffed the airs 
As who should say Come out who dares! 
And all beheld a bull, a Bull, 
And knew that here was surely one 
That backed for no bull, fearing none. 

And the leader of the herd 
Looked and saw, and beat the ground. 
And shook the forest with his sound. 
Bellowed at the loathly bird 
Stationed always in the skies. 
Waiting for the flesh that dies. 

Dreaming, this old bull forlorn, 
Surely dreaming of the hour 
When he came to sultan power. 
And they owned him master-horn, 
Chiefest bull of all among 
Bulls and cows a thousand strong. 

And in all the tramping herd 
Not a bull that barred his way, 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS loi 

Not a cow that said him nay, 
Not a bull or cow that erred 
In the furnace of his look 
Dared a second, worse rebuke; 

Not in all the forest wide, 
Jungle, thicket, pasture, fen. 
Not another dared him then, 
Dared him and again defied; 
Not a sovereign buck or boar 
Came a second time for more. 

Not a serpent that survived 
Once the terrors of his hoof 
Risked a second time reproof. 
Came a second time and lived, 
Not a serpent in its skin 
Came again for discipUne; 

Not a leopard bright as flame, 
Flashing fingerhooks of steel, 
That a wooden tree might feel, 
Met his fury once and came 
For a second reprimand, 
Not a leopard in the land. 

Not a lion of them all, 
Not a hon of the hills. 
Hero of a thousand kills, 
Dared a second fight and fall. 
Dared that ram terrific twice. 
Paid a second time the price. . . . 

Pity him, this dupe of dream. 
Leader of the herd again 
Only in his daft old brain. 
Once again the bull supreme 
And bull enough to bear the part 
Only in his tameless heart. 



I02 NEW VOICES 

Pity him that he must wake; 
Even now the swarm of flies 
Blackening his bloodshot eyes 
Bursts and blusters round the lake, 
Scattered from the feast half-fed, 
By great shadows overhead. 

And the dreamer turns away 
From his visionary herds 
And his splendid yesterday, 
Turns to meet the loathly birds 
Flocking round him from the skies, 
Waiting for the flesh that dies. 

Ralph Hodgson 

SEA GODS 



They say there is no hope — 

Sand — drift — rocks — rubble of the sea — 

The broken hulk of a ship, 

Hung with shreds of rope, 

Pallid under the cracked pitch. 

They say there is no hope 

To conjure you — 

No whip of the tongue to anger you — 

No hate of words 

You must rise to refute. 

They say you are twisted by the sea. 

You are cut apart 

By wave-break upon wave-break, 

That you are misshapen by the sharp rocks, 

Broken by the rasp and after-rasp. 

That you are cut, torn, mangled, 
Torn by the stress and beat. 
No stronger than the strips of sand 
Along your ragged beach. 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS 

II 

But we bring violets, 
Great masses — single, sweet, 
Wood-violets, stream-violets, 
Violets from a wet marsh. 

Violets in clumps from hills, 
Tufts with earth at the roots, 
Violets tugged from rocks. 
Blue violets, moss, cliff, river-violets. 

Yellow violets' gold, 
Burnt with a rare tint — 
Violets like red ash 
Among tufts of grass. 

We bring deep-purple 

Bird-foot violets. 

We bring the hyacinth-violet, 

Sweet, bare, chill to the touch — • 

And violets whiter than the in-rush 

Of your own white surf. 

in 

For you will come, 

You will yet haunt men in ships. 

You will trail across the fringe of strait 

And circle the jagged rocks. 

You will trail across the rocks 
And wash them with your salt, 
You will curl between sand-hills — • 
You will thunder along the cliff — ■ 
Break — retreat — get fresh strength — 
Gather and pour weight upon the beach. 

You will draw back. 

And the ripple on the sand-shelf 

Will be witness of your track. 



103 



I04 NEW VOICES 

O privet-white, you will paint 

The lintel of wet sand with froth. 

You will bring myrrh-bark 

And drift laurel-wood from hot coasts. 

When you hurl high — high — 

We will answer with a shout. 

For you will come, 

You will come, 

You will answer our taut hearts, 

You will break the lie of men's thoughts, 

And cherish and shelter us. 

U. D. 

ARIZONA 

THE WINDMILLS 

The windmills, like great sunflowers of steel. 
Lift themselves proudly over the straggling houses; 
And at their feet the deep blue-green alfalfa 
Cuts the desert like the stroke of a sword. 

Yellow melon flowers 
Crawl beneath the withered peach-trees; 
A date-palm throws its heavy fronds of steel 
Against the scoured metalHc sky. 

The houses, double-roofed for coolness, 

Cower amid the manzanita scrub. 

A man with jinghng spurs 

Walks heavily out of a vine-bowered doorway, 

Mounts his pony, rides away. 

The windmills stare at the sun. 
The yellow earth cracks and blisters. 
Everything is still. 

In the afternoon 

The wind takes dry waves of heat and tosses them, 
Mingled with dust, up and down the streets, 
Against the belfry with its green bells: 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS 105 

And, after sunset, when the sky- 
Becomes a green and orange fan, 
The windmills, like great sunflowers on dried stalks, 
Stare hard at the sun they cannot follow. 

Turning, turning, forever turning 

In the chill night-wind that sweeps over the valley, 

With the shriek and the clank of the pumps groaning beneath them. 

And the choking gurgle of tepid water. 

John Gould Fletcher 

LINCOLN, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE 

When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour 
Greatening and darkening as it hurried on. 
She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down 
To make a man to meet the mortal need. 
She took the tried clay of the common road — 
Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth, 
Dasht through it all a strain of prophecy; 
Tempered the heap with thrill of human tears; 
Then mixt a laughter with the serious stuff. 
Into the shape she breathed a flame to light 
That tender, tragic, ever-changing face; 
And laid on him a sense of the Mystic Powers, 
Moving — all husht — behind the mortal vail. 
Here was a man to hold against the world, 
A man to match the mountains and the sea. 

The color of the ground was in him, the red earth; 

The smack and tang of elemental things: 

The rectitude and patience of the cHff; 

The good-will of the rain that loves all leaves; 

The friendly welcome of the wayside well; 

The courage of the bird that dares the sea; 

The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn; 

The pity of the snow that hides all scars; 

The secrecy of streams that make their way 

Under the mountain to the rifted rock; 

The tolerance and equity of light 



I<>6 NEW VOICES 

That gives as freely to the shrinking flower 
As to the great oak flaring to the wind — 
To the grave's low hill as to the Matterhorn 
That shoulders out the sky. Sprung from the West, 
He drank the valorous youth of a new world. 
The strength of virgin forests braced his mind, 
The hush of spacious prairies stifled his soul. 
His words were oaks in acorns; and his thoughts 
Were roots that firmly gript the granite truth. 

Up from log cabin to the Capitol, 

One fire was on his spirit, one resolve — 

To send the keen ax to the root of wrong. 

Clearing a free way for the feet of God, 

The eyes of conscience testing every stroke, 

To make his deed the measure of a man. 

With the fine gesture of a kingly soul, 

He built the rail-pfle and he built the State, 

Pouring his splendid strength through every blow: 

The grip that swung the ax in Ilhnois 

Was on the pen that set a people free. 

So came the Captain with the mighty heart; 

And when the judgment thunders split the house, 

Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest, 

He held the ridgepole up, and spikt again 

The rafters of the Home. He held his place — 

Held the long purpose hke a growing tree — 

Held on through blame and faltered not at praise. 

And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down -A 

As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs, ^ 

Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, 

And leaves a lonesome place against the sky. 

Edwin Markham 

STANDARDS 

White is the skimming gull on the sombre green of the fir-trees. 
Black is the soaring gull on a snowy glimmer of cloud. 

Charles Wharton Stork 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS 107 

PANDORA'S SONG 

Of wounds and sore defeat 

I made my battle stay; 

Winged sandals for my feet 

I wove of my delay; 

Of weariness and fear, 

I made my shouting spear; 

Of loss, and doubt, and dread, 

And swift oncoming doom 

I made a helmet for my head 

And a floating plume. 

From the shutting mist of death, 

And the failure of the breath, 

I made a battle-horn to blow 

Across the vales of overthrow. 

O hearken, love, the battle-horn! 

The triumph clear, the silver scorn! 

O hearken where the echoes bring, 

Down the grey disastrous morn, 

Laughter and rallying! 

William Vaughn Moody 



A WHITE IRIS 

Tall and clothed in samite, 
Chaste and pure. 
In smooth armor, — 
Your head held high 
In its helmet 
Of silver: 
Jean D'Arc riding 
Among the sword blades! 

Has Spring for you 
Wrought visions. 
As it did for her 
In a garden? 

Pauline B. Barrington 



io8 NEW VOICES 



"FROST TO-NIGHT" 

Apple-green west and an orange bar, 

And the crystal eye of a lone, one star . . . 

And, " Child, take the shears and cut what you will. 

Frost to-night — so clear and dead-still." 

Then I sally forth, half sad, half proud. 
And I come to the velvet, imperial crowd, 
The wine-red, the gold, the crimson, the pied, — 
The dahlias that reign by the garden-side. 

The dahhas I might not touch till to-night! 
A gleam of the shears in the fading light, 
And I gathered them all, — the splendid throng, 
And in one great sheaf I bore them along. 

In my garden of Life with its all-late flowers 
I heed a Voice in the shrinking hours: 
"Frost to-night — so clear and dead-still ..." 
Half sad, half proud, my arms I fill. 

Edith M. Thomas. 

SILVER 

Slowly, silently, now the moon 

Walks the night in her silver shoon; 

This way, and that, she peers and sees 

Silver fruit upon silver trees; 

One by one the casements catch 

Her beams beneath the silvery thatch; 

Couched in his kennel, hke a log, 

With paws of silver sleeps the dog; 

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep 

Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep; 

A harvest mouse goes scampering by, 

With silver claws, and a silver eye; 

And moveless fish in the water gleam, 

By silver reeds in a silver stream. 

Walter de la Mare 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS 109 

FROM "VARIATIONS" 

VI 

You are as beautiful as white clouds 
Flowing among bright stars at night: 
You are as beautiful as pale clouds 
Which the moon sets aHght. 

You are as lovely as golden stars 
Which white clouds try to brush away: 
You are as bright as golden stars 
When they come out to play. 

You are as glittering as those stairs 
Of stone down which the blue brooks run: 
You are as shining as sea-waves 
All hastening to the sun. 



Conrad Aiken 



AN OLD WOMAN OF THE ROADS 

O, to have a little house! 
To own the hearth and stool and all! 
The heaped up sods upon the fire, 
The pile of turf against the wall! 

To have a clock with weights and chains 
And pendulum swinging up and down! 
A dresser filled with shining delph, 
Speckled and white and blue and brown! 

I could be busy all the day 

Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor, 

And fixing on their shelf again 

My white and blue and speckled store! 

I could be quiet there at night 

Beside the fire and by myself, 

Sure of a bed and loth to leave 

The ticking clock and the shining delph! 



no NEW VOICES 



Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark, 

And roads where there's never a house nor bush, 

And tired I am of bog and road, 

And the crying wind and the lonesome hush! 

And I am praying to God on high, 
And I am praying Him night and day, 
For a Httle house — a. house of my own — 
Out of the wind's and the rain's way. 



Padraic Colum 



THE DARK CAVALIER 

I am the Dark Cavaher; I am the Last Lover: 

My arms shall welcome you when other arms are tired; 

I stand to wait for you, patient in the darkness, 
Offering forgetfulness of all that you desired. 

I ask no merriment, no pretense of gladness, 

I can love heavy lids and Hps without their rose; 

Though you are sorrowful you will not weary me; 
I will not go from you when all the tired world goes. 

I am the Dark Cavaher; I am the Last Lover; 

I promise faithfulness no other Hps may keep; 
Safe in my bridal place, comforted by darkness. 

You shall lie happily, smiHng in your sleep. 

Margaret Widdemer 



SAID A BLADE OF GRASS 

Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, 

*' You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams." 

Said the leaf indignant, ''Low-born and low-dwelHng! 

Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you can 

not tell the sound of singing." 
Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. 



IMAGES AND SYMBOLS iii 

And when Spring came she waked again — and she was a blade of grass. 

And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and 
above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she mut- 
tered to herself, "O these autumn leaves! They make such a 
noise! They scatter all my winter dreams." 

Kahlil Gibran 



SYMBOLS 

I saw history in a poet's song, 
In a river reach and a gallows-hill, 
In a bridal bed, and a secret wrong, 
In a crown of thorns: in a daffodil. 

I imagined measureless time in a day. 
And starry space in a wagon-road. 
And the treasure of all good harvests lay 
In a single seed that the sower sowed. 

My garden-wind had driven and havened again 

All ships that ever had gone to sea, 

And I saw the glory of all dead men 

In the shadow that went by the side of me. 

John Drinkwater 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 

"The new poetry strives for a concrete and immediate realization of 
life; it would discard the theory, the abstraction, the remoteness 
found in all classics not of the first order. It is less vague, less verbose, 
less eloquent, than most poetry of the Victorian period and much 
work of earlier periods. It has set before itself an ideal of absolute 
simplicity and sincerity — an ideal which implies an individual, un- 
stereotyped diction; and an individual, unstereotyped rhythm." 

Harriet Monroe in The New Poetry 

The spirit of a poem may derive from any man and may belong 
to all mankind. But only a poet can give this spirit a body 
woven of rhythmical words. When the spirit of the poem has 
been clothed with this body, it becomes vocal. And that is the 
poet's achievement. 

Therefore, to any poet who holds his vocation in honor, words 
are sacred. Practical men and women may use words chiefly for 
utility's sake, to make contracts, buy and sell, get food and give 
orders. Others use words humorously to make a kind of vivid 
and exaggerated fun which we call slang, which is sometimes akin 
to poetry — rather like poetry without any sense of proportion. 
But the poet must use words to make truth and beauty com- 
municable. He must use them to share life bountifully and 
richly. Therefore he must have a sense of the sacredness of 
words. And it is worth while to remember that St. John, The 
Beloved, who was no mean poet, used ''The Word" as the sym- 
bol of the Son of Man, who was to him also the Son of God. 

A good poet must know words as other men and women 
seldom know them. He must know them as others know people. 
He must know that, like people, words do not always agree with 
one another and live in harmony when placed near together. In 
fact they have their own preferred associations. Therefore he 

112 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 113 

must be a wise host, inviting such words to visit him together 
as will take pleasure in each other's society. He must know 
words in families, as we know our neighbors, understanding 
their relationships well so that he may be able to treat them 
tactfully. He must know their meanings-^the minds that are in 
words. He must know their moods and the emotions that they 
excite — the hearts of words. And he must know and understand 
their sounds, long and short, rough and smooth, soft and re- 
sistant, bright and sombre — the beauty of words. 

This is very important. For a loud, noisy word in a bit of 
quiet blank verse, will sometimes create such a disturbance that 
the beauty of the other words will pass unnoticed. It is like the 
entrance of a vulgar, ostentatious, seK-made millionaire into a 
roomful of nuns or Quaker ladies. Or a prim, sedate little word 
introduced into a riotous lyric may seem to be as ill at ease as 
a staid New England dame at a marriage feast in Hawaii, where 
native drinks are drunlv and native dances danced with abandon. 

To any poet worthy the name, words are aUve, and must be 
treated with the reverence due all Hving things. And perhaps 
the poets of to-day deserve more credit for their return to this 
ancient reverence for words, than they deserve for anything 
else. If there be any one way in which poetry has improved 
in the past ten years, it is in the matter of the judicious use of 
words. In the best poetry of recent years we have what Miss 
Monroe calls "an individual, unstereotyped diction," due to 
the poets' ideal of simplicity and sincerity. 

William Butler Yeats (for whose poems and plays may Ire- 
land be praised and blessed!) has been a strong influence for 
good in this matter of diction. It is now twenty years since he 
began preaching his gospel of the use of the words of the best 
contemporary speech in poetry. And nearly all of the best 
poets of our day have accepted this credo and live by its articles. 
John Masefield, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson and the other Georgians 
in England, Louis Untermeyer, Arthur Davison Ficke, Witter 
Bynner, and indeed all of the leading poets in this country, 
seem to have agreed that the language which is good enough foi 



114 NEW VOICES 

labor and love and marriage, for birth and death and the friendly 
breaking of bread, is good enough, if used with discrimination, 
for the making of poetry. And this accounts, in part, for the 
recent growth of popular interest in poetry. Our poets are not 
using a pedantic, unfriendly, top-lof tical jargon, but the language 
of the comimon life. Their meanings do not have to be de- 
ciphered. They can be felt. 

Because they beUeve in the use of the words of the best con- 
temporary speech in poetry, poets of to-day are unwiUing to use 
many of the archaic forms of EngHsh words. They seldom use 
the old-fashioned pronouns "thou" and "ye" and the verbal 
forms that end in "st" for the second person singular and in 
" th" for the third person singular. These forms were once used 
in daily speech. In those days poets could use them naturally 
and effectively in verse because they could feel them. But all 
too often, when modern poets have said "thou" in their verse, 
they have really felt "you" and translated it into "thou," 
because they have been taught that "thou" is in some inexphc- 
able way more poetic. This is why recent poetry in which the 
old forms are too frequently used seems stilted, unnatural and 
remote from life. No modem man could stand before his sweet- 
heart and address her as "O thou" without feeling a Httle bit 
ridiculous. That is why the "O thou" poems and the "hath- 
doth" poems (to quote my friends, the editors) seem ridiculous 
to contemporary critics. 

Most of the modern lyrics in which such archaic forms occur 
could be improved by the substitution of modem forms. At the 
risk of being impertinent, even presumptuous, I am going to 
quote a poem by Dana Burnet (who has written much better 
and more vigorous verse), and, after quoting it, I am going to 
translate it into modern English. Here it is as he wrote it. 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 115 

PAPER ROSES* 

"How earnest thou by thy roses, Child?" 

"I toiled at them in a little room," 
"Thy window flaming with the dawn?" 

"Nay, master; 'twas in fearful gloom." 

"What gave thy rose its color, then?" 
"My cheek's blood, as I bent my head." 

"Thy cheek is cold and lifeless. Child." 
"Mayhap it was my heart that bled." 

"One white rose in thy basket, Child?" 
"Aye, master, that's to crown the whole." 

" What is it, then, O Little Child?" 
"Mayhap . . . mayhap it is my soul!" 

To be sure, this is an imaginary dialogue, a spiritual rather 
than an actual conversation. And this fact may be used as an 
argimient for the archaic language in it. But after much thought 
we come to believe that such spiritual dialogues have a more 
poignant appeal if they are written in simple, unobtrusive lan- 
guage. Moreover, this is a modern theme — child labor in great 
cities — and demands a modern treatment. Rewritten in modern 
English the poem is stronger. Here is what may be called a 
free translation: 

"Where did you get your roses. Child?" 

"I made them in a Uttle room." 
"Your window flaming with the dawn?'* 

"No, sir; in fearful gloom." 

"What gave your roses color, then?" 
"My heart's blood, as I bent my head." 

"Your cheek is cold and Hfeless, Child?" 
"Perhaps my heart bled." 

♦Copyright, 1915, by Harper & Brothers. 



Ii6 NEW VOICES 

"One white rose in your basket, Child?" 
**Yes, sir; it is to crown the whole." 

"What is it, then, O little Child?" 
"I think it is my soul." 

The real danger in depending upon the use of archaic forms is 
that we may come to believe that there is peculiar merit in them 
and use them to get a conventionally poetic effect in lines that 
could not lay claim to being poetry by any other ruling. A com- 
parison of two American poems by the same poet, will show how 
this sometimes happens. The poems are " Unconquered " and 
"Song" by Florence Earle Coates. The first poem is made out 
of a fine thought and feeling — a spiritual bravery. But it be- 
gins with these lines; 

"Deem not, O Pain, that thou shaft vanquish me 

Who know each treacherous pang, each last device, 
Whereby thou barrest the way to Paradise!" 

The second poem, also, is made out of a fine mood and a feeling 
of the greatness of human love. How much better it is! 

"If love were but a little thing — 

Strange love, which, more than all, is great — 

One might not such devotion bring, 
Early to serve and late. 

If love were but a passing breath — 

Wild love — which, as God knows, is sweet — 

One might not make of life and death 
A pillow for love's feet." 

No one, in facing physical or spiritual agony, would be likely, 
nowadays, to say to himself, "Deem not, O Pain, that thou shalt 
vanquish me." But in thinking of the greatness and beauty of 
love anyone might rejoice to repeat the words of "Song." The 
first poem is stilted and artificial. The second is natural and 
lovely. 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 117 

For every rule that critics make a few exceptions must be 
found. And it seems wise, sometimes, to set aside the modern 
prejudice against the old verbal and pronominal forms. Of 
course we must still say "thou" in devotional poetry if we wish 
to induce a feehng of worship, for the use of "thou" in address^ 
ing Deity is still a part of our folk speech. In churches people 
still say "thou" and they feel "thou." That is why BHss Car- 
man's beautiful religious lyric, "Lord of My Heart's Elation," 
would lose much of its grace and strength if " thou " were changed 
to "you" in it. The first stanza reads: 

"Lord of my heart's elation, 
Spirit of things unseen, 
Be thou my aspiration 
Consuming and serene!" 

No one with any sense of aesthetic values would wish to sub- 
stitute the modern pronoun here. 

For a somewhat less obvious reason one would not wish to 
change "thou" to "you" in Constance Lindsay Skinner's poems 
of Indian life. The life of the American Indian is a tragic re- 
cessional. He is being thrust back into the past. Almost he 
seems to belong to the past. And when we think of his hfe and 
customs and folklore, we are thinking back into simpler and 
more naive periods of history. Therefore, for the sake of that 
naivete, that primitive feeling sometimes gained through the 
judicious use of old forms. Miss Skinner is justified. 

The gist of the whole matter is that neither "thou" nor any 
other word should be used in poetry for conventional reasons or 
because it is supposed to be especially "Hterary." Any word 
strong enough to serve its purpose and convey meaning is 
poetic if used in the right place, in true and strong relation with 
other words, and as a result of the poet's sincere realization of 
the thing which he describes. The trouble is that unskilled 
poets sometimes use these antique forms because they suppose 
that, being antique, they have, in and of themselves, all the 
virtues of antiquity. Or else they use them inconsistently, 



Ii8 NEW VOICES 

mixed in with modern words and forms, to facilitate rhyming, 
or because they need extra syllables for their mechanically 
contrived meters. Poets who are not skillful enough to over- 
come the minor difhculties of rhyming and regular meter with- 
out recourse to ineffectual and false diction should be ashamed 
to show their clumsiness and to ply the great trade of Seanchan 
slothfuUy. To use "seemeth" in one line and "seems" in the 
next, "doth walk" in one Hne and "walks" in the next, is 
shoddy art. Such expressions are not variably used in good 
conversation. Poetry is the best conversation. 

Perhaps just a word or two should be said about "poetic 
license," since many people have strange ideas about the liber- 
ties it permits poets. The first thing to be said is that it is 
mercifully obsolescent and that the sooner we forget it, the bet- 
ter. No good poet of to-day wants a Ucense for any unfair deal- 
ing with words. No good poet wants license for any unfair 
dealing with meaning or rhythm or image. No good poet wants 
Hcense to create any poetry which is less honest, craftsmanlike 
and beautiful than the most beautiful prose. Distortions of sen- 
tence structure, limp adjectives slipping downhill at the end of 
the line after their nouns, all ugly and awkward inversions and 
substitutions, are things that good contemporary poets despise. 
In an article written for The Los Angeles Graphic, Eunice Tiet- 
jens states the case against "poetic Ucense " very well. What she 
says should be quoted with emphasis. 

"If the modern poet gives himself greater liberty in the verse forms 
he uses — though even there he has only discarded one set of rules for 
another set quite as binding if not quite so easily defined — yet on the 
other hand he no longer permits himself to lay ruthless hands upon 
the language. The 'poetic' words which once besprinkled the pages 
of even the best poets are now laid aside, we hope forever, along with 
other outworn garments of an earlier civilization. Here again it is 
to be stated with certainty that the verse writer of to-day is not 
worthy of consideration who thinks himself licensed to use such 
words as 'e'en/ 'twixt,' "mongst/ 'e'er,' and the rest of that ilk, 
or who resorts to such subterfuges as 'do swoon' and 'did come.'" 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 119 

A few years ago the conventions of poetic language were held 
to be as unchanging as the laws of the Medes and Persians. In 
those days "azure" was considered a poetic word, ''blue" a 
prosaic word, "beauteous" and "bounteous" were poetic 
words, "beautiful" and "bountiful" were prosaic words, 
"zephyr" was poetic, "breeze," prosaic. The modern poet 
favors the use of the words that used to be considered prosaic, 
for he finds that they are a part of our speech and therefore a 
part of our Ufe. But he feels free, of course, to use any word 
as occasion demands. His only dogma is that there must be 
some sufficient reason of meaning or euphony which makes one 
word better than another. 

Contemporary poetry, like great poetry of any period, owes 
much of its warmth and humanity to this freedom in the use of 
words. Time was when minor Victorians would have told us 
that such words as "greasy" and "pot" could never be made 
poetic and should never be used in a lyric. But Shakespeare, 
in a lyric that has lived for many generations as an admirable 
piece of picturing combined with genuine emotion, used both oj 
these words, in one line, in a repeated refrain! 

" While greasy Joan doth keel the pot." 

If a modern innovator had written this poem with all its 
sharp beauty of homely picture, conservative critics would 
have made life miserable for him. They would have said, " That 
is not poetry." But it is perfect poetry of its kind. Every 
word in it is related to the meaning and mood of the whole. 
It is a sharing of life in vivid and unforgettable language. Shake- 
speare needed no rules. We need make none for him. 

Contemporary poets permit themselves a large amount of 
freedom in their selection of words for poems, but they have a 
prejudice against a few words, and especially against a few 
tired adjectives that seem to have lost interest in life. Such ad- 
jectives as "vernal" and "supe-rnal" are seldom used by our 
poets because they fail to make a quick and strong appeal to the 
modem mind. When we hear "heavenly or "lofty," most of 



I20 NEW VOICES 

us can make a mental picture of the meaning. When we say 
"spring," or "youthful," the same thing is true. But "super- 
nal" and "vernal" bring no clear-cut conception. The life 
seems to have vanished out of them. And the good poet of to- 
day smiles when he remembers how they served to make life 
easy for the Post- Victorian minor poet who had left the ad- 
jective "eternal" all alone at the end of a line of verse and 
needed a rhyme for it. 

Ten years ago the same poets who loved to rhyme "vernal" 
and "supernal" and "eternal" and "diurnal" had forgotten 
that words, for the poet, must be the fruit of realization. They 
filled their verses with words and phrases considered quite 
appropriate simply because they were customarily used and 
had become formulae. They invented what might be called the 
rubber stamp method of writing poetry! But it was not poetry 
that they wrote. 

To-day nothing wearies readers of poetry more than a trite 
and stereotyped diction. The public has learned that such 
diction is the result of laziness or mental sterility. Lilies 
are stately and violets modest yesterday, to-day and forever, 
truly. But lilies and violets have other qualities, also. And 
the poet of to-day knows that, in speaking of "the stately 
lily" or the "modest violet," he causes no animation in the 
modern mind, strikes no spark of emotion, shares no sense 
of life. Therefore, when we find such phrases in modern verse, 
we may be sure that the maker of the poem is rendering a 
mere Hp-service, for hire or for vanity, that he is not rendering 
the strong and sincere soul-and-body service of the poet. For 
not until all poets and all readers have in mind the clean, hard 
honesty of words to the extent that each word must tally with 
experience, will these old phrases, once vitally and beautifully 
used, regain their value for occasional use in the mouths of the 
poets and of the people. 

The use of trite phrases, oddly enough, is the besetting sin 
of academic poets and of other learned persons who read verses 
at meetings of scholarly societies. Humble persons who hear 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 121 

such verse read, or find it shamelessly exposed to view in the 
pages of parlor-table magazines, are troubled, saying to them- 
selves, ''It must be good poetry, for he is a very great man. If I 
knew enough I should hke it." May Apollo speed the day when 
these humble persons will know for themselves that such metrical 
mimicries of a noble past are not poetry at all ! Nor is poetry 
good because a great man has written it. It must be written by 
a great poet. A man may be a great philosopher, politician, 
teacher, novelist, historian, financier, and quite incapable of 
writing a single hne of poetry. This should not have to be said. 

While we wait for the millennium of the poets, which will be a 
rather jolly millennium when it comes — the evil goes on. At a 
meeting of very learned men in a very great city, and not very 
long ago, a piece of academic verse was read in which the 
following expressions were used: "mystery strange" (why not 
"strange mystery"?), "high supernal fiat" (note the tau- 
tology!), "red passion growths," "stately lily" (of course!), 
"purple mists," "lust of power," "love of gain," "balm of 
kindly counsel," "endless aeons," "unseen, incredible, yet 
true," "memoried moods," "supine ease," "vibrant air," "won- 
drous past," "further parley," "verdure to the desert," "perilous 
peaks," "ardour of the soul," "pomp and pageant of the fall," 
"pitiful earth-ken," "vision far but fair," "thrills with pur- 
pose," "rainbow promises," and "heathen hearts." Why is it, 
by the way, that nobody ever mentions anything else about 
the heathen? Have they no eyes, ears, foreheads or feet? 

The ghosts of the elder singers who were strong enough for 
realization and sincere expression might well haunt this man. 
But nothing happened to him when the poem was read. No one 
haled him to jail for his abuse of the language and his offer of 
counterfeit for the true coin of poetry. No one even demanded 
a bond of him to write no more verse. And yet, although he 
may be a good citizen and a good husband and father, he was, 
when he read that poem, a menace to American culture. 

The diction of the poets who have styled themselves Imagists 
deserves especial attention, for theoretically they are arch- 



122 NEW VOICES 

enemies of the trite phrase. And they are seldom guilty of the 
use of formulae. This may be because the poets of this minor 
school are exceedingly intellectual poets and believe in making 
conscious use of sense impressions. Very often an Imagist 
poem is nothing but an exercise in imagining the pleasure to be 
had from certain textures, colors, sounds, sights, tastes and move- 
ments. The Imagists endeavor to be true to their ''doctrine 
of the image" and use no abstractions, no vague suggestions. 
They present things in hard, concrete words. And, coming as 
they have, after a period of windy eloquence, bombastic piety, 
and flatulent sentimentality in poetry, they have done much 
to enable contemporary poets of all schools to focus their atten- 
tion on the matter of diction. 

But unfortunately, like many theorists, they have carried 
theory too far. They have been too much interested in their 
own aesthetic conceptions and in their theories of craftsmanship 
to remember that poetry, after all, is the sharing of life. And 
their diction has the stamp of Imagism upon it rather more 
frequently than the stamp of any individual poet's genius. The 
color words of this school have become a mannerism. Imagists 
are too fond of such lovely words as "chrome," "saffron," 
"mauve," especially "mauve." (One critic mentions "mauve 
Imagism ") ! And a certain modern poet, not an Imagist himself, 
has been so much influenced by this school that he even speaks 
of the wounds of Christ as "mauve." In fixing his mind upon 
a sense impression that he wishes to create for his reader, he is 
heedless of the associations of the word "mauve" with depart- 
ment stores and dressmakers, associations which might prevent 
a great poet from using the word to describe the wounds of the 
World-Hero. 

In criticizing the diction of contemporary poetry, or of any 
poetry, we must always keep in mind the type of poetry we are 
reading. Diction which would be strong and true in narrative 
or dramatic poetry might be ill-suited to the needs of the makers 
of lyrics. In a narrative poem, or in a dramatic poem, char- 
acters must be differentiated, and this requires of a poet a skiU 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 123 

in catching the flavors of the speech of the people he is describ- 
ing. Not only must the diction of the whole poem be true to 
the spirit of the whole poem, but it must also be true, in each 
individual case, to the character of the speaker on whose Ups 
it is found. And furthermore, it must be true to the locahty 
in which the events take place, or to the racial consciousness 
behind them. And in long poems the words used must con- 
tribute to the variety of design without which they become 
monotonous. 

The diction of ''The Everlasting Mercy" by John Masefield 
fulfills all of these requirements. When the poem was first 
pubUshed in this country, its very strength, its chiaroscuro of 
rough ugliness and serene beauty, aroused critics who were fast 
becoming accustomed to mild-mannered and innocuous verse, 
and there was not a little discussion of the words in it. The 
famous and ugly passage which describes the beginning of the 
quarrel between Bill and Saul seemed to many persons to be 
superfluous and coarse. But to-day most of us have accepted 
it as an essential ugHness in a great poem full of spiritual beauty, 
for it shows very clearly, vividly and concisely just the class and 
kind of men who are quarreling together. It shows their racial 
quahty as lower class Britishers and it sharpens our interest 
in what is to foUow. 

If it had been smoothly and prettily said, the value of the 
poem would have been destroyed. But such lines and such ex- 
pressions would have no proper place in a short lyric of the 
subjective kind. We have only to read them to reahze this. 

"'It's mine.' 
'It ain't!' 
'You put.' 
'You liar.' 
*You closhy put.' 
'You bloody liar.' 
'This is my field.' 
'This is my wire.' 
'I'm ruler here.' 



124 NEW VOICES 

'You ain't.' 

'I am.' 

'I'll fight you for it.' 

'Right, by damn.'". 

We could never tolerate many lines like these even in a long 
narrative poem. And one of the dehghts in reading "The Ever- 
lasting Mercy" is a delight in the freshness and variety of the 
words used from page to page. Another passage quite as true 
racially, and quite as true to the character of Saul in one of his 
nobler moods, is the passage that describes the love of running 
light-foot and swift along a country road at night. 

"The men who don't know to the root 
The joy of being swift of foot 
Have never known divine and fresh 
The glory of the gift of flesh, 
Nor felt the feet exult, nor gone 
Along a dim road, on and on, 
Knowing again the bursting glows, 
The mating hare in April knows. 
Who tingles to the pads with mirth 
At being the swiftest thing on earth." 

This passage is in keeping with that great passage from Brown- 
ing's "Saul" that begins "How good is man's life, the mere 
Hving. " 

Just as good in its own way is the diction of the passage that 
tells how Saul amused little Jimmy Jaggard with fairy tales 
about Tom-cats and mouse-meat. And, in the end, the poem's 
language reaches into a beauty that means the redemption of 
the sinner. The racial quality is not lost. The man's class and 
character are not lost. But he is fulfilled in his own kind. All 
the words that are used show the fulfillment. It is the homely 
salvation of the humble. 

"All earthly things that blessed morning 
Were everlasting joy and warning. 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 125 

The gate was Jesus' way made plain, 
The mole was Satan foiled again, 
Black blinded Satan snouting way 
Along the red of Adam's clay; 
The mist was error and damnation, 
The lane the road unto salvation. 
Out of the mist into the hght, 
O blessed gift of inner sight. 
The past was faded like a dream; 
There came the jingling of a team, 
A ploughman's voice, a chnk of chain, 
Slow hoofs, and harness under strain. 
Up the slow slope a team came bowing. 
Old Callow at his autumn ploughing, 
Old Callow, stooped above the hales. 
Ploughing the stubble into wales. 
His grave eyes looking straight ahead, 
Shearing a long straight furrow red; 
His plough-foot high to give it earth 
To bring new food for men to birth. 
O wet red swathe of earth laid bare, 
O truth, O strength, O gleaming share, 
O patient eyes that watch the goal, 
O ploughman of the sinner's soul. 
O Jesus, drive the coulter deep 
To plough my living man from sleep." 

The wisdom used in choosing these v^^ords, the utter naturalness 
of them, is something that is too good to be conspicuous and 
will be discovered only by those who read the poem more than 
once and think about it quietly. One line alone for truth and 
vitality would make this passage memorable, — 

"Up the slow slope a team came bowing." 

Who that has ever seen ploughing will deny the truth of these 
words? Almost equally good are the lines, 

"His grave eyes looking straight ahead, 
Shearing a long straight furrow red ; 
His plough-foot high to give it earth." 



126 NEW VOICES 

It is hardly necessary to speak of the grave, strong symbohsm 
of many parts of this passage, for that is something that any 
reader will feel. 

Another narrative poem in which the use of words can be 
studied to good advantage is "Hoops," by Wilfrid Wilson Gib- 
son. Mr. Gibson's work differs from Mr. Masefield's in that he 
does not attempt to use just the words that his characters would 
have spoken. He uses the words that their souls might have 
spoken if their lips had learned them. For that reason his dic- 
tion, beautiful and austere though it is, at times seems to take 
his characters far away from us as real, Hving men and women, 
capable of reserves and intimacies, and leave them with us only 
as spirits speaking through Mr. Gibson. In ''Hoops," for ex- 
ample, we find a circus clown and a tender of camels talking to- 
gether on the ground near the entrance of the circus tent. The 
clown is Merry Andrew. The tender of camels is Gentleman 
John. What they say to each other has genuine importance as 
the speech of two souls revealing themselves. In it is wisdom, 
a sense of values in life, a sense of beauty and of ugliness, and of 
the characters shown in beasts and persons. But all of these 
things belong to Mr. Gibson, the poet, and are felt as belong- 
ing to him. They may belong to the souls of Merry Andrew 
and Gentleman John, but they do not belong on their lips in the 
words that Mr. Gibson has chosen. Says Gentleman John: 

"And then consider camels: only think 

Of camels long enough, and you'ld go mad — ■ 

With all their humps and lumps; their knobbly knees, 

Splay feet and straddle legs; their sagging necks, 

Flat flanks and scraggy tails, and monstrous teeth." 

That is an admirable description of a camel, somewhat too ad- 
mirable, perhaps, for the mouth of Gentleman John, a little too 
clever with its play of double consonants and short "a" sounds 
from line to line, even though Mr. Gibson does tell us later — 
perhaps to explain Gentleman John's gift of words — that Gentle- 
man John wanted to be a poet. Still more admirable as Mr. 




4 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 127 

Gibson's own description, still more improbable as Gentleman 
John's description, are the lines about the elephant. 

"The elephant is quite a comely brute, 
Compared with Satan camel, — trunk and all, 
His floppy ears and his inconsequent tail. 
He's stolid, but at least a gentleman. 
It doesn't hurt my pride to valet him. 
And bring his shaving-water. He's a lord. 
Only the bluest blood that has come down 
Through generations from the mastodon 
Could carry off that tail with dignity, 
That tail and trunk. He cannot look absurd, 
For all the monkey tricks you put him through. 
Your paper hoops and popguns. He just makes 
His masters look ridiculous, when his pomp's 
Butchered to make a bumpkin's holiday." 

As an example of good diction to which locality as well as 
character contributes flavor and quality, nothing can be better 
than the diction of Robert Frost. Mr. Frost is not merely a 
new craftsman, he is a new personal force deep-rooted in local- 
ity. He belongs somewhere — in rural New England. And from 
that physical and spiritual environment he draws his strength. 
We can hardly call his characters fictitious. For they are real. 
We know that they, or their ghosts are all there, "North of 
Boston" still. Poems like ''Blueberries" are fragrant with the 
scent of the New England countryside and full of the dry, de- 
licious humor of the thrifty, quiet, kindly Yankee farmer. "A 
Hundred Collars" is one of the most delightfully ironical poems 
in the whole of American literature. In it the New England 
small town drunkard, who happens to be an agent for a country 
newspaper, and the New England schoolmaster, who has out- 
grown his own home town, are obliged to share a room in a 
country hotel. The exquisite tact and kindliness of the drunk- 
ard, who wears collars of the size eighteen, and the awkward 
dislike, distrust, and discomfiture of the man of the world are 
shown in inimitable fashion. In "The Code: Heroics" we learn 



12 8 NEW VOICES 

the silent pride of the New England ''hired man" and his 
Yankee audacity in defending that pride. And in many and 
many a poem we have heart-breaking stories of lonely women 
on the farms who are servants to hired men as well as to their 
families. To get the best out of these narratives they must 
be read as a whole, as we would read the story of New England. 
In each of them the diction is the diction of the people described. 
Mr. Frost has been absolutely true to the characters as in- 
dividuals and to the spiritual atmosphere of the locality. And 
he has not allowed any showy eccentricities to mar his style. No 
doubt many persons would prefer to have more catchwords and 
a peculiar jargon instead of the plain famiUar EngUsh which his 
characters use. But Mr. Frost does not put dialect in the mouths 
of these people, because he does not hear them use it. 

Even Mr. Frost's abbreviations are true to contemporary 
speech and to character. He does not use the old-fashioned 
''o'er," "twixt" and "'tis" of the conventional versifier. But 
he does use the common modern abbreviations, "doesn't," 
"isn't," "I'd" and the like. He is quite unmindful of Hterary 
conventionalities and very faithful to reality. And in spite of 
the plainness of the speech he uses — or because of it — ^his 
characters are intensely alive with passions that even reserves 
and humor can not hide. 

Vachel Lindsay is another poet who shares life with us in 
every word. He puts it in the turn of every sentence. His 
phrases growl and flirt, smirk and glare, point fingers and make 
faces, sputter and fizzle and splash color broadly upon the uni- 
verse. We come to realize gradually that he is a man with the 
imagination and sensitivity of the bards of Greece and the 
prophets of Israel, hving in an immense modern world, where 
life is multiform and multi-colored, graver and more humorous, 
more complex and more varied than ever it was in the days 
of the ancient Greeks or Hebrews. And we realize, also, that 
he has lived in that state of social and spiritual consciousness 
which we call the United States of America. 

In this fact we find one reason for his vitality as a poet. He 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 129 

is deeply rooted in our civilization. Our folklore, our customs, 
our ethics, our idealism and our reasons for laughter are well 
known to him. The time that he spent upon the open highways 
of our country, preaching his gospel of beauty, — "Bad public 
taste is mob law — good public taste is democracy" — that time 
was also a time of learning. In those days our people gave him 
many secrets. Perhaps they taught him not to scorn the simple 
and homely virtues which they value. Perhaps they helped 
not a little to make him what he has certainly become, the 
spiritual descendent of Mark Twain and James Whitcomb 
Riley, as American as Riley's pumpkins or the whitewash on 
Tom Sawyer's fence. 

But his artistic heritage comes to him from long, long ago, 
from the troubadours and bards and minnesingers and min- 
strels, from the makers of sagas and runes. To sum it all up, 
he is something that has never been before — an American 
minstrel. 

In "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven" we have a 
poem which is a masterpiece of powerful phraseology set to the 
tune of "The Blood of The Lamb." In this hotly human poem 
we are permitted to watch the transfiguration of Booth's "ver- 
min-eaten saints with mouldy breath" when they are led into 
the courts of Heaven to the beating of Booth's drum. In the 
light of the beatific vision of King Jesus they become 

" Sages and sybils now and athletes clean, 
Rulers of empires and of forests green!" 

The finest workmanship, however, in the making of this poem, 
is in the description of the forlorn army before the transfigura- 
tion. 

In his greatest poem, "The Chinese Nightingale," all the 
strong, quaint, original qualities that have won fame for Vachel 
Lindsay are to be found at their best. Gracious rhythms, deli- 
cious imaginings and exquisite phraseology all belong to this 
fantasy in a Chinese laundry. 



I30 NEW VOICES 

"Then this did the noble lady say: 

' Bird, do you dream of our home-coming day 

When you flew like a courier on before 

From the dragon-peak to our palace-door, 

And we drove the steed in your singing path — 

The ramping dragon of laughter and wrath: 

And found our city all aglow, 

And knighted this joss that decked it so? 

There were golden fishes in the purple river 

And silver fishes and rainbow fishes. 

There were golden junks in the laughing river 

And silver junks and rainbow junks: 

There were golden lilies by the bay and river, 

And silver lilies and tiger-lilies, 

And tinkling wind-bells in the gardens of the town 

By the black-lacquer gate 

Where walked in state 

The kind king Chang 

And his sweetheart mate . . . '" 

In the making of the short, subjective lyric the words should 
be simple, fluent, melodious, such words as can be sung easily. 
Words like those that contributed to the force and vividness of 
long narratives like ''The Everlasting Mercy" and ''Hoops" — 
such words as "closliy," "snouting," "knobbly," "straddle," 
"humps," "popguns," "bumpkin" and the like, are seldom 
appropriate in lyrics ! They would be quite out of place in such 
songs as Sara Teasdale gives us, or even in her supple and mag- 
netic blank verse. Nor do we fmd any words of this kind in her 
work. Her diction, like her meaning and emotion, is limpid 
and simple. As an example, let us read five lines from her 
"Sappho." 

"There is a quiet at the heart of love, 

And I have pierced the pain and come to peace. 

I hold my peace, my Cleis, on my heart; 

And softer than a little wild bird's wing 

Are kisses that she pours upon my mouth." 



I 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 131 

These lines are perfect in chaste and fluent beauty. But we 
should realize that a very long poem of the dramatic or narrative 
type would lack variety and cloy upon us if made wholly of lines 
Hke these. 

We must demand of all poets, then, that their diction be in 
harmony with the spirit of their creation. Poems that blaze 
with the soul of an individual, or of mankind, take to them- 
selves, in the labor of great poets, a flesh of words of one kind 
with the spirit that flashes through it. In poetry, as in Ufe, let 
the fool wear his motley, let Caliban be known in the coarse 
body of Caliban, let the Madonna wear her white beauty and 
her mantle of blue. 

HER WORDS 

My mother has the prettiest tricks 

Of words and words and words. 
Her talk comes out as smooth and sleek 

As breasts of singing birds. 

She shapes her speech all silver fine 

Because she loves it so. 
And her own eyes begin to shine 

To hear her stories grow. 

And if she goes to make a call 

Or out to take a walk 
We leave our work when she returns 

And run to hear her talk. 

We had not dreamed these things were so 

Of sorrow and of mirth. 
Her speech is as a thousand eyes 

Through which we see the earth. 

God wove a web of loveliness, 

Of clouds and stars and birds, 
But made not any thing at all 

So beautiful as words. 



132 



NEW VOICES 

They shine around our simple earth 

With golden shadowings, 
And every common thing they touch 

Is exquisite with wings. 

There's nothing poor and nothing small 

But is made fair with them. 
They are the hands of Hving faith 

That touch the garment's hem. 

They are as fair as bloom or air, 

They shine like any star, 
And I am rich who learned from her 

How beautiful they are. 

Anna Hempstead Branch. 

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS 

I went out to the hazel wood 

Because a fire was in my head, 

And cut and peeled a hazel wand, 

And hooked a berry to a thread; 

And when white moths were on the wing, 

And moth-like stars were flickering out, 

I dropped the berry in a stream, 

And caught a little silver trout. 

When I had laid it on the floor, 
I went to blow the fire a-flame, 
But something rustled on the floor. 
And some one called me by my name: 
It had become a glimmering girl, 
With apple-blossom in her hair. 
Who called me by my name and ran 
And faded through the brightening air. 

Though I am old with wandering 
Through hollow lands and hilly lands, 
I will find out where she has gone, 
And kiss her lips and take her hands; 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 133 

And walk among long dappled grass, 
And pluck till time and times are done 
,The silver apples of the moon, 
The golden apples of the sun. 

William Butler Yeats 



GRIEVE NOT FOR BEAUTY 

Grieve not for the invisible, transported brow 

On which like leaves the dark hair grew, 

Nor for the lips of laughter that are now 

Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew, 

Nor for those limbs that, fallen low 

And seeming faint and slow. 

Shall yet pursue 

More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips 

Among . . . and find more winds than ever blew 

The straining sails of unimpeded ships! 

Mourn not ! — yield only happy tears 

To deeper beauty than appears! 



Witter Bynner 



OLD AGE 



Old Age, the irrigator, 

Digs our bosoms straighter. 

More workable and deeper still 

To turn the ever-running mill 

Of nights and days. He makes a trough 

To drain our passions off. 

That used so beautiful to lie 

Variegated to the sky. 

On waste moorlands of the heart — 

Haunts of idleness, and art 

Still half-dreaming. All their piedness, 

Rank and wild and shallow wideness, 

Desultory splendors, he 

Straightens conscientiously 

To a practicable sluice 

Meant for workaday, plain use. 



134 NEW VOICES 

All the mists of early dawn, 
Twilit marshes, being gone 
With their glamor, and their stench, 
There is left — a narrow trench. 

Percy Mackaye 

THE END OF THE WORLD 

The snow had fallen many nights and days; 

The sky was come upon the earth at last. 

Sifting thinly down as endlessly 

As though within the system of blind planets 

Something had been forgot or overdriven. 

The dawn now seemed neglected in the grey 

Where mountains were unbuilt and shadowless trees 

Rootlessly paused or hung upon the air. 

There was no wind, but now and then a sigh 

Crossed that dry falling dust and rifted it 

Through crevices of slate and door and casement. 

Perhaps the new moon's time was even past. 

Outside, the first white twilights were too void 

Until a sheep called once, as to a lamb. 

And tenderness crept everywhere from it; 

But now the flock must have strayed far away. 

The hghts across the valley must be veiled, 

The smoke lost in the greyness or the dusk. 

For more than three days now the snow had thatched 

That cow-house roof where it had ever melted 

With yellow stains from the beasts' breath inside; 

But yet a dog howled there, though not quite lately. 

Someone passed down the valley swift and singing, 

Yes, with locks spreaded Hke a son of morning; 

But if he seemed too tall to be a man 

It was that men had been so long unseen, 

Or shapes loom larger through a moving snow. 

And he was gone and food had not been given him. 

When snow slid from an overweighted leaf. 

Shaking the tree, it might have been a bird 

Slipping in sleep or shelter, whirring wings; 

Yet never bird fell out, save once a dead one — 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 135 

And in two days the snow had covered it. 

The dog had howled again — or thus it seemed 

Until a lean fox passed and cried no more. 

All was so safe indoors where hfe went on 

Glad of the close enfolding snow — O glad 

To be so safe and secret at its heart, 

Watching the strangeness of familiar things. 

They knew not what dim hours went on, went by. 

For while they slept the clock stopt newly wound 

As the cold hardened. Once they watched the road, 

Thinking to be remembered. Once they doubted 

If they had kept the sequence of the days. 

Because they heard not any sound of bells. 

A butterfly, that hid until the Spring 

Under a ceiling's shadow, dropt, was dead. 

The coldness seemed more nigh, the coldness deepened 

As a sound deepens into silences; 

It was of earth and came not by the air; 

The earth was cooling and drew down the sky. 

The air was crumbling. There was no more sky. 

Rails of a broken bed charred in the grate. 

And when he touched the bars he thought the sting 

Came from their heat — he could not feel such cold . . . 

She said "O, do not sleep, 

Heart, heart of mine, keep near me. No, no; sleep. 

I will not lift his fallen, quiet eyelids, 

Although I know he would awaken then — 

He closed them thus but now of his own will. 

He can stay with me while I do not lift them." 

Gordon Bottomley 

THE OLD BED 

Streaming beneath the eaves, the sunset light 
Turns the white walls and ceiling to pure gold, 
And gold, the quilt and pillows on the old 
Fourposter bed — all day a cold drift-white — 
As if, in a gold casket glistering bright, 
The gleam of winter sunshine sought to hold 
The sleeping child safe from the dark and cold 
And creeping shadows of the coming night. 



136 NEW VOICES 

Slowly it fades: and stealing through the gloom 
Home-coming shadows throng the quiet room, 
Grey ghosts that move unrustKng, without breath, 
To their familiar rest, and closer creep 
About the httle dreamless child asleep 
Upon the bed of bridal, birth and death. 

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 

SUNRISE ON RYDAL WATER 

To E. dc S. 

Come down at dawn from windless hills 

Into the valley of the lake. 
Where yet a larger quiet fills 

The hour, and mist and water make 
With rocks and reeds and island boughs 
One silence and one element, 
J Where wonder goes surely as once 

It went 

By GaHlean prows. 

Moveless the water and the mist, 
Moveless the secret air above, 
Hushed, as upon some happy tryst 
The poised expectancy of love; 
What spirit is it that adores 
What mighty presence yet unseen? 
What consummation works apace 
Between 
These rapt enchanted shores? 

Never did virgin beauty wake 
Devouter to the bridal feast 

Than moves this hour upon the lake 
In adoration to the east. 
Here is the bride a god may know, 
The primal will, the young consent. 
Till surely upon the appointed mood 
Intent 
The god shall leap — ^and, lo, 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 137 

Over the lake's end strikes the sun — 

White, flameless fire; some purity 
Thrilling the mist, a splendor won 

Out of the world's heart. Let there be 
Thoughts, and atonements, and desires; 
Proud hmbs, and undehberate tongue; 
Where now we move with mortal care 
Among 

Immortal dews and fires. 

So the old mating goes apace, 

Wind with the sea, and blood with thought, 
Lover with lover; and the grace 
Of understanding comes unsought 
When stars into the twilight steer, 
Or thrushes build among the may, 
Or wonder moves between the hills. 
And day 

Comes up on Rydal mere. 

John Drinkwater 
LEAVES 

One by one, hke leaves from a tree. 
All my faiths have forsaken me; 
But the stars above my head 
Burn in white and delicate red, 
And beneath my feet the earth 
Brings the sturdy grass to birth. 
I who was content to be 
But a silken-singing tree, 
But a rustle of dehght 
In the wistful heart of night, 
I have lost the leaves that knew 
Touch of rain and weight of dew. 
Blinded by a leafy crown 
I looked neither up nor down — 
But the leaves that fall and die 
Have left me room to see the sky; 
Now for the first time I know 
Stars above and earth below. 

Sara Teasdale 



138 NEW VOICES 

SPRING 

At the first hour, it was as if one said, "Arise." 
At the second hour, it was as if one said, "Go forth." 
And the winter constellations that are like patient ox-eyes 
Sank below the white horizon at the north. 

At the third hour, it was as if one said, "I thirst"; 

At the fourth hour, all the earth was still: 

Then the clouds suddenly swung over, stooped, and burst; 

And the rain flooded valley, plain and hill. 

At the fifth hour, darkness took the throne; 
At the sixth hour, the earth shook and the wind cried; 
At the seventh hour, the hidden seed was sown. 
At the eighth hour, it gave up the ghost and died. 

At the ninth hour, they sealed up the tomb; 
And the earth was then silent for the space of three hours. 
But at the twelfth hour, a single lily from the gloom 
Shot forth, and was followed by a whole host of flowers. 

John Gould Fletcher 

IN THE POPPY FIELD 

Mad Patsy said, he said to me. 
That every morning he could see 
An angel walking on the sky; 
Across the sunny skies of morn 
He threw great handfuls far and nigh 
Of poppy seed among the corn; 
And then, he said, the angels run 
To see the poppies in the sun. 

A poppy is a devil weed, 
I said to him — he disagreed; 
He said the devil had no hand 
In spreading flowers tall and fair 
Through corn and rye and meadow land, 
By garth and barrow everjovhere: 
The devil has not any flower, 
But only money in his power. 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 139 

And then he stretched out in the sun 
And rolled upon his back for fun: 
He kicked his legs and roared for joy 
Because the sun was shining down, 
He said he was a Uttle boy 
And would not work for any clown: 
He ran and laughed behind a bee, 
And danced for very ecstasy. 

James Stephens 
INTERLUDE 

I am not old, but old enough 
To know that you are very young. 
It might be said I am the leaf, 
And you the blossom newly sprung. 

So I shall grow a while with you, 
And hear the bee and watch the cloud, 
Before the dragon on the branch, 
The caterpillar weaves a shroud. 

SciMder Middleton 
MYSTERY 

If a star can grow 

On a blade of grass, 

If a rose can climb 

Like a Romeo, 

And a river flow 

Through a granite wall — • 

Maybe a human heart, 

Broken within a breast, 

Can heal again 

In the simple rain, 

When a man is laid to rest. 

Scudder Middleton 

THE GUM-GATHERER 

There overtook me and drew me in 
To his down-hill, early-morning stride, 
And set me five miles on my road 
Better than if he had had me ride. 



I40 NEW VOICES 

A man with a swinging bag for load 
And half the bag wound round his hand. 
We talked hke barking above the din 
Of water we walked along beside. 
And for my telling him where I'd been 
And where I lived in mountain land 
To be coming home the way I was, 
He told me a little about himself. 
He came from higher up in the pass 
Where the grist of the new-begiiming brooks 
Is blocks spKt off the mountain mass — 
■ And hopeless grist enough it looks 
Ever to grind to soil for grass. 
(The way it is will do for moss.) 
There he had built his stolen shack. 
It had to be a stolen shack 
Because of the fears of fire and loss 
That trouble the sleep of lumber folk: 
Visions of half the world burned black 
And the sun shrunken yellow in smoke. 
We know who when they come to town 
Bring berries under the wagon seat, 
Or a basket of eggs between their feet; 
What this man brought in a cotton sack 
Was gum, the gum of the mountain spruce. 
He showed me lumps of the scented stuff. 
Like uncut jewels, dull and rough. 
It comes to market golden brown; 
But turns to pink between the teeth. 

I told him this is a pleasant life 
To set your breast to the bark of trees 
That all your days are dim beneath, 
And reaching up with a little knife. 
To loose the resin and take it down 
And bring it to market when you please. 

Robert Frost 



i 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 141 



THE COW IN APPLE TIME 

Something inspires the only cow of late 

To make no more of a wall than an open gate, 

And think no more of wall-builders than fools. 

Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools 

A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit, 

She scorns a pasture withering to the root. 

She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten 

The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten. 

She leaves them bitten when she has to fly. 

She bellows on a knoll against the sky. 

Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry. 

Robert Frost 

AT NIGHT (To W. M.) 

Home, home from the horizon far and clear, 

Hither the soft wings sweep; 
Flocks of the memories of the day draw near 

The dovecote doors of sleep. 

Oh, which are they that come through sweetest light 

Of all these homing birds? 
Which with the strangest and the swiftest flight 

Your words to me, your words! 



Alice Meynell 



FROM "VARIATIONS" 

II 

Green hght, from the moon, 

Pours over the dark blue trees. 

Green light from the autumn moon 

Pours on the grass . . . 

Green light falls on the goblin fountain 

Where hesitant lovers meet and pass. 

They laugh in the moonlight, touching hands, 
They move like leaves on the wind . . . 



142 NEW VOICES 

I remember an autumn night like this, 
And not so long ago, 

When other lovers were blown like leaves, 
Before the coming of snow. 

Conrad Aiken 

DAYBREAK 

Four years of night and nightmare, years of black 

Hate and its murderous attack; 

Four years of midnight terrors till the brain. 

Beaten in the intolerable campaign. 

Saw nothing but a world of driven men 

And skies that never could be clean again; 

Hot winds that tore the lungs, great gusts 

Of rotting madness and forgotten lusts; 

Hills draped with death; the beat of terrible wings; 

Flowers that smelt of carrion; monstrous things 

That crawled on iron bellies over trees 

And swarmed in blood, till even the seas 

Were one wet putrefaction, and the earth 

A violated grave of trampled mirth. 

What light there was, was only there to show 

Intolerance delivering blow on blow. 

Bigotry rampant, honor overborne. 

And faith derided with a blast of scorn. 

This was our daily darkness; we had thought 

All freedom worthless and all beauty naught. 

The eager, morning-hearted days were gone 

When we took joy in small things: in the sun. 

Tracing a deUcate pattern through thick leaves, 

With its long, yellow pencils; or blue eaves 

Frosted with moonlight, and one ruddy star 

Ringing against the night, a chime 

Like an insistent, single rhyme; 

Or see the full-blown moon stuck on a spar, 

A puff-ball flower on a rigid stalk; 

Or think of nothing better than to walk 

With one small boy and listen to the war 

Of waters pulling at a stubborn shore; 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 

Or laugh to see the waves run out of bounds 

Like boisterous and shaggy hounds; 

Watching the stealthy rollers come alive, 

And shake their silver manes and leap and dive; 

Or Usten with him to the voiceless talk 

Of fireflies and daisies, feel the late 

Dusk full of unheard music or vibrate 

To a more actual magic, hear the notes 

Of birds with sunset shaking on their throats; 

Or watch the emerald and olive trees 

Turn purple ghosts in dusty distances; 

The city's kindling energy; the sweet 

Pastoral of an empty street; 

Foot-ball and friends; lyrics and daffodils; 

The sovereign splendor of the marching hills — 

These were all ours to choose from and enjoy 

Until this foul disease came to destroy 

The casual beneficence of life. . . . 

But now a thin edge, like a merciful knife, 
Pierces the shadows, and a chiseling ray 
Cuts the thick folds away. 
Murmurs of morning, glad, awakening cries, 
Hints of majestic rhythms, rise. 
Dawn will not be denied. The blackness shakes, 
And here a brand and there a beacon breaks 
Into the glory that will soon be hurled 
Over a cleared, rejuvenated world — 
A world of bright democracies, of fair 
Disputes, desires, and tolerance everywhere, 
With laughter loose again, and time enough 
To feel the warm-lipped and cool-fingered love, 
With kindly passion Hfted from the dead; 
Where daylight shall be bountifully spread. 
And darkness but a wide and welcome bed. 

Louis Untermeyer 



143 



144 NEW VOICES 



VISTAS 

As I walked through the rumorous streets 
Of the wind-rustled, elm-shaded city 
Where all of the houses were friends 

And the trees were all lovers of her, 
The spell of its old enchantment 
Was woven again to subdue me 
With magic of flickering shadows, 

Blown branches and leafy stir. 

Street after street, as I passed, 
Lured me and beckoned me onward 
With memories frail as the odor 

Of lilac adrift on the air. 
At the end of each breeze-blurred vista 
She seemed to be watching and waiting, 
With leaf shadows over her gown 

And sunshine gilding her hair. 

For there was a dream that the kind God 
Withheld, while granting us many — • 
But surely, I think, we shall come 

Sometime, at the end, she and I, 
To the heaven He keeps for all tired souls, 
The quiet suburban gardens 
Where He Himself walks in the evening 

Beneath the rose-dropping sky 
And watches the balancing elm trees 
Sway in the early starshine 
When high in their murmurous arches 

The night breeze ruffles by. 

Odell Shepard 

CERTAIN AMERICAN POETS 

They cowered inert before the study fire 

While mighty winds were ranging wide and free, 

Urging their torpid fancies to aspire 

With "Euhoe! Bacchus! Have a cup of tea." 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 145 

They tripped demure from church to lecture-hall, 
Shunning the snare of farthingales and curls. 
Woman they thought half angel and half doll, 
The Muses' temple a boarding-school for girls. 

Quaffing Pierian draughts from Boston pump, 
They toiled to prove their homiletic art 
Could match with nasal twang and pulpit thiunp 
In maxims gHb of meeting-house and mart. 

Serenely their ovine admirers graze. 
Apollo wears frock-coats, the Muses stays. 

Odell Shepard 

AFTER SUNSET 

I have an understanding with the hills 
At evening, when the slanted radiance fills 
Their hollows, and the great winds let them be. 
And they are quiet and look down at me. 
Oh, then I see the patience in their eyes 
Out of the centuries that made them wise. 
They lend me hoarded memory, and I learn 
Their thoughts of granite and their whims of fern, 
And why a dream of forests must endure 
Though every tree be slain; and how the pure, 
Invisible beauty has a word so brief, 
A flower can say it, or a shaken leaf. 
But few may ever snare it in a song. 
Though for the quest a Hfe is not too long. 
When the blue hills grow tender, when they pull 
The twilight close with gesture beautiful. 
And shadows are their garments, and the air 
Deepens, and the wild veery is at prayer. 
Their arms are strong around me; and I know 
That somehow I shall follow when they go 
To the still land beyond the evening star, 
Where everlasting hills and valleys are. 
And silence may not hurt us any more. 
And terror shall be past, and grief and war. 

Grace Hazard Conkling 



146 NEW VOICES 



SHIPS 

I cannot tell their wonder nor make known 
Magic that once thrilled through me to the bone, 
But all men praise some beauty, tell some talc, 
Vent a high mood which makes the rest seem pale, 
Pour their heart's blood to flourish one green leaf, 
Follow some Helen for her gift of grief, 
And fail in what they mean, whate'er they do: 
You should have seen, man cannot tell to you 
The beauty of the ships of that my city. 
That beauty now is spoiled by the sea's pity; 
For one may haunt the pier a score of times, 
Hearing St. Nicholas bells ring out the chimes, 
Yet never see those proud ones swaying home 
With mainyards backed and bows a cream of foam, 
Those bows so lovely-curving, cut so fine. 
Those coulters of the many-bubbled brine. 
As once, long since, when all the docks were filled 
With that sea-beauty man has ceased to build. 

Yet, though their splendor may have ceased to be 

Each played her sovereign part in making me; 

Now I return my thanks with heart and lips 'M 

For the great queenliness of all those ships. ^ 

And first the first bright memory, still so clear, 
An autumn evening in a golden year, 
When in the last lit moments before dark 
The Chepica, a steel-gray lovely barque, 
Came to an anchor near us on the flood. 
Her trucks aloft in sun-glow red as blood. 

Then come so many ships that I could fill 

Three docks with their fair hulls remembered still, 

Each with her special memory's special grace, 

Riding the sea, making the waves give place 

To delicate high beauty; man's best strength, 

Noble in every line in all their length. 

Ailsa, Genista, ships, with long jibbooms. 

The Wanderer with great beauty and strange dooms. 



THE DICTION OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 147 

Liverpool (mightiest then) superb, sublime, 
The California huge, as slow as time. 
The Copley swift, the perfect J. T. North, 
The lovehest barque my city has sent forth, 
Dainty John Lockett well remembered yet, 
The splendid Argus with her skysail set, 
Stalwart Drumclif, white- blocked, majestic Sierras, 
Divine bright ships, the water's standard-bearers; 
Melpomene, Euphrosyne, and their sweet 
Sea-troubhng sisters of the Fernie fleet ; 
Corunna (in whom my friend died) and the old 
Long since loved Esmeralda long since sold. 
Centurion passed in Rio, Glaucus spoken, 
Aladdin burnt, the Bidston water-broken, 
Yola, in whom my friend sailed, Dawpool trim. 
Fierce-bowed Egeria plunging to the swim, 
Stanmore wide-sterned, sweet Cupica, tall Bard, 
Queen in all harbors with her moon-sail yard. 

Though I tell many, there must still be others, 
McVickar Marshall's ships and Fernie Brother's, 
Lochs, Counties, Shires, Drums, the countless lines 
Whose house-flags all were once familiar signs 
At high main-trucks on Mersey's windy ways 
When sunlight made the wind-white water blaze. 
Their names bring back old mornings, when the docks 
Shone with their house-flags and their painted blocks, 
Their raking masts below the Custom House 
And all the marvellous beauty of their bows. 

Familiar steamers, too, majestic steamers. 

Shearing Atlantic roller-tops to streamers, 

Umbria, Etruria, noble, still at sea, 

The grandest, then, that man had brought to be. 

Majestic, City of Paris, City of Rome, 

Forever jealous racers, out and home. 

The Alfred HoWs blue smoke-stacks down the stream. 

The fair Loanda with her bows a-cream. 

Booth liners. Anchor liners. Red Star Hners, 

The marks and styles of countless ship-designers, 



148 NEW VOICES 

The Magdalena, Puno, Potosi, 

Lost Cotopaoci, all well known to me. 

These splendid ships, each with her grace, her glory, 

Her memory of old song or comrade's story, 

Still in my mind the image of life's need, 

Beauty in hardest action, beauty indeed. 

"They built great ships and sailed them," sounds most brave, 

Whatever arts we have or fail to have. 

I touch my country's mind, I come to grips 

With half her purpose, thinking of these ships: 

That art untouched by softness, all that line 

Drawn ringing hard to stand the test of brine; 

That nobleness and grandeur, all that beauty 

Born of a manly Hfe and bitter duty, 

That splendor of fine bows which yet could stand 

The shock of rollers never checked by land; 

That art of masts, sail-crowded, fit to break, 

Yet stayed to strength and backstayed into rake; 

The life demanded by that art, the keen 

Eye-puckered, hard-case seamen, silent, lean, __ 

They are grander things than all the art of towns; :>ja 

Their tests are tempests and the sea that drowns. ^ 

They are my country's line, her great art done 

By strong brains laboring on the thought unwon 

They mark our passage as a race of men — 

Earth will not see such ships as those again. 

John Masefidd 



CERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POETS 

Very likely it is a good thing that most people are conserva- 
tive. If most of us were radicals the world might be a fatiguing 
place to live in. We should all suffer from nervous prostration 
most of the time as a result of breaking the speed laws of rapid 
progress. After aU, the normal conservative is a very decent 
person, Hberal enough to try all things in due season and with 
due persuasion, and wise enough to hold fast to that which is 
good. 

But always there are people who are more than normally con- 
servative. They are the ultra-conservatives. They beheve in 
*'the good old times." They beheve that things should always 
be done the way they used to be done. They think that " things 
were better" in the days of their childhood, or in the times of 
their fathers, who, in turn, probably thought the same thing of 
the times before their own. Ultra-conservatives are people in 
whose minds the ages progress backv/ards in time to a lost and 
lamented golden age of impossible virtue and intolerable beauty. 

In the poetry of to-day we have both conservative and ultra- 
conservative poets. The moderate conservatives, poets like 
BUss Carman, Charles G. D. Roberts, Anna Hempstead Branch, 
Lizette Woodworth R eese. Ada Foster Murray, Katharine Lee 
Bates, and a number of others who have been mentioned in 
preceding pages, are content simply to hold fast to all that is 
good in the traditions of English poetry. They are men and 
women of genuine culture, the heirs of the ages claiming their 
heritage. They are not in the forefront of what is called "the 
new poetry movement," nor are they in sympathy with all of 
its manifestations. But their best work is done in accordance 
with the same underlying principles that are the credo of " the 
new poets," although they do not go to extremes in practice 

149 



I50 NEW VOICES 

or in theory and although they do not bring into contemporary 
poetry anything "new" except what is new in their own person- 
aUties, the thing which makes all poets, as Lord Dunsany says, 
'' incomparable." These moderate conservatives make beautiful 
original patterns in poetry and use images and symbols and 
rhythms that are the result of sincere reactions to stimuli and 
the sincere expression of emotions felt. They avoid artificial, 
stereotyped diction. They use the language of the best con- 
temporary speech in most of their verse. They are seldom dif- 
fuse, vague, sentimental. They are capable of concise lyrical 
expression and do not revel in decoration simply for its own sake 
and without due regard to its structural importance. 

The ultra-conservatives are poets of quite another kind. If it 
be fair to judge by their work, they must believe that great 
poets are dead poets and the old thoughts, the best thoughts, 
forever and ever. Amen. They must believe that the best 
thing poets can do is to write in the spirit of and after the manner 
of the ancients who never die. They seem to care little for con- 
temporary life and thought and do not create their poems after 
the manner of contemporary poetry. 

Most of these ultra-conservative poets are men and women 
of unquestioned culture, men and women whose minds are 
saturated with Uterature, especially the literature of the past. 
They are steeped in culture as a rum-cake is steeped in rum. 
They know more about it than most of the radical poets ever 
will know. But they are not so near to contemporary life. And 
the poems that they make often seem to be the result of a re- 
action to literature, not of a reaction to life. Much of what 
they write is lunar, not solar, a cool, glimmering reflection from 
other and stronger lights. This is not to say that their work is 
imitative in any childish way. It is derivative, not from the 
strength of any one genius of the past, but from thought's com- 
panionship with many geniuses. It is the poetry of the learned 
rather than the poetry of those with "small Latin and less 
Greek." 

It is these poets who argue in poetry with modern theories 



CERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POETS 151 

of life and the universe. It is these poets who prefer the old 
wisdoms and follies of the race to the new. It is these poets 
who create out of old mythologies and creeds the old recipes 
for truth and beauty in a world that is new. And it is these 
poets whose technique differs in kind from the technique of most 
of the poets whose work we have discussed. 

In the first place it is difficult to discover in their poetry any 
intimacy of relationship between the emotion felt (the mood and 
meaning of the poem) and the pattern of the poem, its rhythm, 
imagery, and symbolism. Very often the ultra-conservatives 
seem to have chosen a rhythm which they consider beautiful 
in and of itself, and then to have fitted their thoughts and feel- 
ings into the pattern of the rhythm. They seldom invent forms 
of decided strength and originahty, like the forms Mr. Kipling 
and Mr. Chesterton use, but choose their forms academically 
from those already invented. Their rhythms, therefore, are not 
always of one sort and substance with their moods. Their 
designs are like moulds into which they press what they wish to 
say. And strict symmetry of metrical structure is so important 
in their minds that they will go to all extremes to preserve it. 
Sometimes they will leave out words that are important gram- 
matically or logically, words that would never be omitted in 
lines of good prose, in order to avoid a change in accent, a sub- 
stitution of a long syllable for two short syllables, or the inter- 
polation of an extra short syllable in the fine. Sometimes they 
will insert superfluous adjectives at the ends of lines for the 
sake of rhyme. Or they will invert the order of words in sen- 
tences and rearrange phrases and clauses in a manner closely 
resembling that of the Teutons, to serve the end of rhyme. 
For to the ultra-conservatives rhyme is more than simply one 
way of adding to the resonance and charm of poetry. It is a 
convention never to be forgotten save in blank verse or when one 
is asleep. 

The diction of the ultra-conservatives is sometimes modern 
and very beautiful, but often archaic and literary. It is usually 
the ultra-conservative poet who prefers the use of the old pro- 



152 



NEW VOICES 



nominal forms for direct address and begins his poem with ''O 
Thou" or ''Ye who." It is he who prefers the archaic forms of 
verbs — the *'hast," "art," "wert" forms that go with the ar- 
chaic pronouns. It is usually the ultra-conservative poet who 
will use a form like "careth" in one line, in the third per- 
son, and in another line, for the sake of rhyme, a form like 
"cares," also in the third person. It is the ultra-conservative 
poet who prefers the diction that used to be called "poetic," 
the diction that once belonged to life and was used by poets 
of other periods wisely and well because they found it close to 
Hfe. 

It is the ultra-conservative poet who appears to beHeve in 
imagery and symbolism as decorative additions to the poem 
rather than as structural parts of its truth and beauty. 

For these reasons the poets and critics who belong to what is 
called "the new poetry movement" have been exceedingly cruel 
to the ultra-conservatives. They have not always been just. 
It is very hard to be just in the consideration of ideals which we 
are trying to displace, for which we are trying to substitute ideals 
that we consider better and higher. But in the interests of 
poetry we should be just. For the poems of the ultra-conserva- 
tives mean beauty to them, as the poems of the radicals mean 
beauty to radicals. Time alone can tell, in each individual 
case, who is right. 

Chief among ultra-conservative poets in popularity and fame 
is Alfred Noyes, and many of the battles of contemporary criti- 
cism have been fought out on the question of the merit of his 
work. When his first poems were brought to the attention of the 
American public in the days before the " new poetry movement" 
was properly begun, it was quite the thing to like Mr. Noyes. 
Now, if one would be popular as a critic, one must decry him as 
Victorian. But strict justice demands neither out and out 
praise nor out and out censure for his work. Some of it is very 
much worth while. He can do certain things that other poets 
of to-day can not do so well, or at least have not done. He does 
other things very badly indeed. But it is the melancholy truth 



CERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POETS 153 

that he is as popular for the things he does badly as for the things 
he does well. This is why. 

His ideas do not conflict in any way with those to which men 
and women trained in the schools of the past generation are 
accustomed. His emotions are always decorous. His tunes 
jingle happily. His colors are pretty. His verse is scented with 
rose and sweet with honey. What he says of Chopin, in his 
poem, "The Death of Chopin," is as true of himself. He has 

"Made Life as honey o'er the brink 
Of Death drip slow." 

The poorest of his poems are those that are argumentative. 
Poets seldom make good poems when they argue. But some- 
times they succeed in presenting their ideas with a certain terse 
skill and vividness that are interesting. Mr. Noyes does not. 
When he upbraids the scientist and confronts what he chooses 
to think of as unfortunate and benighted materialism with the 
conventional and ultra-conservative idea of religion, he makes 
it quite evident that he has not taken pains to know and under- 
stand the ideas and ideals of his imaginary opponent. Without 
any insincere intentions, I am sure, he misinterprets his ad- 
versary and then valiantly defies the misinterpretation. The 
poems in which Mr. Noyes slays straw men are quite without 
any quality of deep insight and without the imaginative feHcity 
of which he is capable at his best. They serve to convey to the 
reader an idea for which no poet would care to be responsible, 
that it is better to be intellectually comfortable than intel- 
lectually candid. Take, as an example, " The Old Sceptic." 

Very little better than these argumentative poems are his 
long and diffuse and sentimental lyrics and his epic, ''Drake." 
His lyrics lack concentration and power. His epic lacks dignity 
and reaUty. When we stop to think of what the actualities of 
life must have been for that gallant mariner, Mr. Noyes ' pages 
of romantic and velvety narrative verse and his suave inter- 
polated lyrics seem as unreal as the landscape painted on the 
drop curtain of a theater. 



154 NEW VOICES 

It is superfluous, too, to say much of Mr. Noyes ' sentimental- 
ity. Other critics have told the tale of it unkindly enough. 
There is too much said in his poetry of the "seas of dream" 
and the " shores of song." In the lyric called "The Last Battle " 
we find this stanza: 

"Now all the plains of Europe smoke with marching hooves of thun- 
der, 

And through each ragged mountain-gorge the guns begin to gleam; 
And round a hundred cities where the women watch and wonder, 

The tramp of passing armies aches and faints into a dream." 

This moves along very pleasantly and seems very good until we 
stop to analyze it. Analysis is cruel. But how can the plains of 
Europe "smoke" with "hooves"? And do hooves march like 
feet? And what are "hooves of thunder?" And why do the 
guns "begin to" gleam? Is it not because Mr. Noyes needs 
three more syllables to fill out the metrical scheme of the line? 
And how does the "tramp" of the armies "ache?" And is it 
emotionally honest to say that the tramp of armies "faints into 
a dream? " Is that the effect it has on consciousness? The daily 
newspapers print many paragraphs that give a truer and more 
vivid idea of warfare and the passing armies than this stanza 
gives. 

But this is enough of censure. It remains to tell the story of 
the very real beauty in Mr. Noyes ' work. For this is the beauty 
which is neglected or forgotten by many contemporary critics, 
simply because they do not like the qualities described in what 
we have already said and will not look for compensating virtues. 

At his best Mr. Noyes is that very rare poet, the maker of fine 
ballads. Not to recognize this fact is to be altogether unjust to 
him and blind to values in poetry. He has the story teller's gift, 
the pleasant fancy, the sense of the dramatic incident, the light, 
quick touch, the facility with rhyme and rhythm, which go into 
the making of good ballads. Mr. Noyes makes such very good 
ballads that he should never do anything else. "The High- 
wayman," quick, fluent, dramatic, merits the popularity which 



\ 



CERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POETS 155 

many of his less admirable poems have won. And what can be 
said that will detract from the charm of that delightful, rollick- 
ing, ringing ballad, ''Forty Singing Seamen"? 

"Forty Singing Seamen" is a very fine poem of its kind, a 
masterpiece among modern ballads. It is a poem of dual nature, 
never very far from reaHty, never very far from a world that is 
purely imaginary. The sailors, after drinking the grog of the 
ghosts, have preposterous visions, but they have the visions 
in a very real and human way. The sailor- talk seems to have the 
right flavor. 

"Across the seas of Wonderland to Mogadore we plodded, 

Forty singing seamen in an old black barque, 
And we landed in the twilight where a Polyphemus nodded 

With his battered moon-eye winking red and yellow through the 
dark! 
For his eye was growing mellow, 
Rich and ripe and red and yellow. 
As was time, since Old Ulysses made him bellow in the dark! 
Cho. — Since Ulysses bunged his eye up with a pine-torch in the dark! " 

That is the first stanza and every other stanza is as good, as 
rich and lively and entertaining. Only very dull people, or very 
sophisticated people, of whom there are too many nowadays, 
can fail to get fun out of a ballad like that. 

Moreover the technique of it is admirable. The rhythm is 
the true accompaniment of the story and the spirit, and just 
what a ballad rhythm ought to be. The imagery is admirable 
and always important in the life and structure of the poem. It is 
not a poem for the learned and sober. It is not a poem for the 
aesthete of the saffron schools. It is a poem for normal, whole- 
some, red-blooded human beings. And in this day and age when 
few poets can make ballads that are even readable, we should 
be the more grateful for this achievement. 

Mr. Noyes has written other poems, in a similar vein, that are 
not to be despised. His "Song of a Wooden-Legged Fiddler" 
is one of them. 



156 NEW VOICES 

There are good passages, also, in ''The Forest of Wild 
Thyme," and especially in Part II, called "The First Dis- 
covery." From this poem are taken the following delicately 
imagined lines: 

"If you could suddenly become 

As small a thing as they, 
A midget child, a new Tom Thumb, 

A little gauze-winged fay, 
Oh then, as through the mighty shades 
Of wild thyme woods and violet glades 
You groped your forest-way. 
How fraught each fragrant bough would be 
With dark o'er-hanging mystery." 

Another well known poet of the ultra-conservative type is 
George Edward Woodberry. His finest achievement in poetry 
may well be his sonnet sequence called "Ideal Passion." Many 
critics have praised it lavishly. Writing in the Bulletin of The 
Poetry Society of America, Jessie B. Rittenhouse said, "It is 
doubtful if Mr. Woodberry has done anything finer than these 
sonnets which invoke again the spirit of the 'Vita Nuova' and 
other great expressions of love subUmated to an unattainable 
ideal." That is an exact statement of the quaHty of these son- 
nets. But, if we think of them in a purely human way, and with- 
out regard to the spirit of other literature, which they may be 
said to invoke, we miss something which would give them vi- 
tality. They are rare, but attenuated. They lack the Antaean 
strength that comes only from the earth. The Hercules of 
idealism has strangled them in mid air. They make us feel an 
obligation to rise beyond gravitation, to breathe without oxygen. 
After all, is it not true that ideals, to be most serviceable to 
mankind, must grow out of the common racial experience of 
mankind and fulfill themselves in the most lovely flowering of 
that experience? There is beauty in the lines that say, 

"in a flying marble fold 
Of Hellas once I saw eternity 



CERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POETS 157 

Flutter about her form; all nature she 

Inspirits, but round her being there is rolled 
The inextinguishable beauty old 

Of the far shining mountains and the sea." 

but it is chilly beauty. This sonnet sequence, however, is an 
intellectual achievement. 

A poet hardly less conservative in type, but with a warmth 
and quaintness of manner not to be found in Mr. Woodberry's 
poetry, is Olive Tilford Dargan. She has the gift of saying, 
sometimes, the simple, inevitable words that make the unfor- 
gettable picture. She does this more than once in that quiet- 
toned, freely rhythmical poem called ''Old Fairingdown," in 
Hnes like these: 

"Each mute old house is more old than the other, 
And each wears its vines like ragged hair 
Round the half -blind windows." 

That is authentic poetry, original and true. 

How greatly it differs from lines like the following taken 
from "The Magdalen to Her Poet "! 

"Take back thy song; or let me hear what thou 
Heardst anciently from me. 
The woman; now 
This wassail drift on boughless shore; 
Once lyre-veined leading thee 

To swinging doors 
Out of the coiling dark." 

Such lines as these are not only obscure but uninteresting. And 
a comparison of these two passages will serve to show the kind 
of thing conservatives do at their best, and when they are not 
at their best, the typical excellences and faults of the group. 

Mrs. Dargan's best work, like the best work of Mr. Noyes, 
has been done in the making of a ballad. If she would only make 
more ballads as charming as "Path Flower," how happy we 



158 NEW VOICES 

should be! "Path Flower" is at once very simple and very con- 
ventional. It uses one of the typical stanzas of balladry. It 
deals with the simplest of incidents, something that might 
happen at any time in the life of any kindly person, the giving 
of a small coin to a young girl who looked ragged and hungry! 
But this poem is so magically made that we are as much in- 
terested in this little incident as we could be in an event more 
important. The interest is admirably sustained from line to Hne 
and the poem is written with tact, refinement and deUcacy of 
perception. The same quaintness of manner which is pleasing 
in "Old Fairingdown" is found in "Path Flower." 

"At foot each tiny blade grew big 

And taller stood to hear, 
And every leaf on every twig 

Was like a little ear." 

Enough has been said about the work of the ultra-conserva- 
tive poets to show that there are two ideals of poetry to-day, 
theirs, and the ideal of most of the other poets. To the ultra- 
conservatives, poetry is most intimately associated with Htera- 
ture. To the others it is most intimately associated with life. 
To the ultra-conservatives, it is something sacrosanct and pre- 
cious, something a httle too fragile for every day use. To the 
others it is spiritual bread and butter. 

Now unfortunately, many ultra-conservatives never realize 
that, by giving to poetry this quaUty of the sacrosanct and the 
precious, they are keeping it away from all that makes it most 
meaningful and lovable to the people of the every day world. 
Not that the standard of poetry should be lowered that it may 
be brought close to human hearts — the end is not achieved in 
that way! Rather the standard should be raised in spirit and 
in technique so that poetry achieves a simple greatness and a 
great simplicity worthy of the people. Poetry written in a 
special literary language with prescribed rhythms and conven- 
tional ideas and set patterns may have beauty of a kind, and 
sometimes does have. But it is a beauty of tapestries, not a 



CERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POETS 159 

beauty of wildflowers and bird-song. And it is when they escape 
from the bondage of conventional verbiage and meter, and be- 
come, for the nonce, simple, natural and human, that we delight 
to name the men and women of this type, not ultra-conservatives, 
but poets. 

SONG 

For me the jasmine buds unfold 

And silver daisies star the lea, 
The crocus hoards the sunset gold, 

And the wild rose breathes for me, 
I feel the sap through the bough returning, 

I share the skylark's transport fine, 
I know the fountain's wayward yearning, 

I love, and the world is mine! 

I love, and thoughts that sometime grieved, 

Still well remembered, grieve not me; 
From all that darkened and deceived 

Upsoars my spirit free. 
For soft the hours repeat one story. 

Sings the sea one strain divine; 
My clouds arise all flushed with glory — 

I love, and the world is mine! 

Florence Earle Coates 



FORTY SINGING SEAMEN* 

"In our lands be Beeres and Lyons of djrv^ers colours as ye redd, 
grene, black, and white. And in our land be also unicornes and these 
Unicornes slee many Lyons. . . . Also there dare no man make a lye 
in our lande, for if he dyde he sholde incontynent be sleyn." Mediaeval 
Epistle, of Pope Prester John. 

I 

Across the seas of Wonderland to Mogadore we plodded, 
Forty singing seamen in an old black barque, 

* Copyright 1906. Alfred Noyes. Copyright 1906, 1913, F. A. Stokes Company. 



i6o NEW VOICES 

And we landed in the twilight where a Polyphemus nodded 

With his battered moon-eye winking red and yellow through the 
dark! 
For his eye was growing mellow, 
Rich and ripe and red and yellow, 
As was time, since old Ulysses made him bellow in the dark ! 

Cho. — Since Ulysses bunged his eye up with a pine-torch in the dark ! 



Were they mountains in the gloaming or the giant's ugly shoulders 

Just beneath the rolling eyeball, with its bleared and vinous glow, 
Red and yellow o'er the purple of the pines among the boulders 
And the shaggy horror brooding on the sullen slopes below, 
Were they pines among the boulders 
Or the hair upon his shoulders? 
We were only simple seamen, so of course we didn't know. 

Cho. — We were simple singing seamen, so of course we couldn't know. 

Ill 

But we crossed a plain of poppies, and we came upon a fountain 

Not of water, but of jewels, like a spray of leaping fire; 
And behind it, in an emerald glade, beneath a golden mountain 
There stood a crystal palace, for a sailor to admire; 
For a troop of ghosts came round us. 
Which with leaves of bay they crowned us. 
Then with grog they well nigh drowned us, to the depth of our 
desire! 

Cho. — And 'twas very friendly of them, as a sailor can admire! 

IV 

There was music all about us, we were growing quite forgetful 
We were only singing seamen from the dirt of London-town, 
Though the nectar that we swallowed seemed to vanish half regretful 
As if we wasn't good enough to take such vittles down, 
When we saw a sudden figure, 
Tall and black as any nigger, 
Like the devil — only bigger-— drawing near us with a frown! 

Cho. — ^Like the devil — but much bigger — and he wore a golden crown! 



CERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POETS i6i 

V 

And "What's all this?" he growls at us! With dignity we chaunted, 

"F'orty singing seamen, sir, as won't be put upon!" 
"What? Englishmen?" he cries, "Well, if ye don't mind being 
haunted. 
Faith, you're welcome to my palace; I'm the famous Prester John! 
Will ye walk into my palace? 
I don't bear 'ee any malice! 
One and all ye shall be welcome in the halls of Prester John! " 

Cho. — So we walked into the palace and the halls of Prester John! 

VI 

Now the door was one great diamond and the hall a hollow ruby — ■ 

Big as Beachy Head, my lads, nay bigger by a half! 
And I sees the mate wi' mouth agape, a-staring like a booby. 
And the skipper close behind him, with his tongue out like a calf! 
Now the way to take it rightly 
Was to walk along politely 
Just as if you didn't notice — so I couldn't help but laugh ! 

Cho. — For they both forgot their manners and the crew was bound to 
laugh! 

VII 

But he took us through his palace and, my lads, as I'm a sinner, 

We walked into an opal hke a sunset-coloured cloud — 
"My dining-room," he says, and, quick as light we saw a dinner 
Spread before us by the fingers of a hidden fairy crowd; 
And the skipper, swaying gently 
After dinner, murmurs faintly, 
"I looks to-wards you, Prester John, you've done us very proud!" 

Cho. — And we drank his health with honours, for he done us very 
proud! 

vni 
Then he walks us to his garden where we sees a feathered demon 

Very splendid and important on a sort of spicy tree ! 
"That's the Phoenix," whispers Prester, "which all eddicated seamen 



i62 NEW VOICES 

Knows the only one existent, and he's waiting for to flee! 

When his hundred years expire 

Then he'll set hissclf afire 
And another from his ashes rise most beautiful to see!" 

Cho. — With wings of rose and emerald most beautiful to see! 

DC 

Then he says, "In yonder forest there's a little silver river, 

And whosoever drinks of it, his youth shall never die! 
The centuries go by, but Prester John endures forever 

With his music in the mountains and his magic on the sky! 
While your hearts are growing colder, 
While your world is growing older. 
There's a magic in the distance, where the sea-line meets the sky." 

Cho. — It shall call to singing seamen till the fount o' song is dry! 

X 

So we thought we'd up and seek it, but that forest fair defied us, — 

First a crimson leopard laughs at us most horrible to see. 
Then a sea-green lion came and sniffed and Ucked his chops and eyed 
us. 
While a red and yellow unicorn was dancing round a tree! 
We was trying to look thinner 
Which was hard, because our dinner 
Must ha' made us very tempting to a cat o' high degree! 

Cho. — Must ha' made us very tempting to the whole menarjeree! 

XI 

So we scuttled from that forest and across the poppy meadows 

Where the awful shaggy horror brooded o'er us in the dark! 
And we pushes out from shore again a-jumping at our shadows 
And pulls away most joyful to the old black barque! 
And home again we plodded 
While the Polyphemus nodded 
With his battered moon-eye winking red and yellow through the 
dark. 

Cho — Oh, the moon above the mountains, red and yellow through the 
dark! 



CERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POETS 163 

xn 

Across the seas of Wonderland to London-town we blundered, 

Forty singing seamen as was puzzled for to know 
If the visions that we saw was caused by — here again we pondered — 
A tipple in a vision forty thousand years ago. 
Could the grog we dreamt we swallowed 
Make us dream of all that followed? 
We were only simple seamen, so of course we didn't know! 

Cho. — We were simple singing seamen, so of course we could not know! 

Alfred Noyes 



ASH WEDNESDAY 

{After hearing a lecture on the origins of religion) 

Here in the lonely chapel I will wait, 

Here will I rest, if any rest may be; 

So fair the day is, and the hour so late, 

I shall have few to share the blessed calm with me. 

Calm and soft light, sweet inarticulate calls! 

One shallow dish of eerie golden fire 

By molten chains above the altar swinging, 

Draws my eyes up from the shadowed stalls 

To the warm chancel-dome; 

Crag-like the clustered organs loom. 

Yet from their thunder-threatening choir 

Flows but a ghostly singing — 

Half -human voices reaching home 

In infinite, tremulous surge and falls. 

Light on his stops and keys, 

And pallor on the player's face, 

Who, listening rapt, with finger-skill to seize 

The pattern of a mood's elusive grace, 

Captures his spirit in an airy lace 

Of fading, fading harmonies. 

Oh, let your coolness soothe 

My weariness, frail music, where you keep 

Tryst with the even-fall; 

Where tone by tone you find a pathway smooth 



i64 NEW VOICES 

To yonder gleaming cross, or nearer creep 
Along the bronzed wall, 
Where shade by shade thro' deeps of brown 
Comes the still twilight down. 

Wilt thou not rest, my thought? 

Wouldst thou go back to that pain-breeding room 

Whence only by strong wrenchings thou wert brought? 

O weary, weary questionings. 

Will ye pursue me to the altar rail 

Where my old faith for sanctuary clings, 

And back again my heart reluctant hale 

Yonder, where crushed against the cheerless wall 

Tiptoe I glimpsed the tier on tier 

Of faces unserene and startled eyes — 

Such eyes as on grim surgeon-work are set, 

On desperate outmaneuverings of doom? 

Still must I hear 

The boding voice with cautious rise and fall 

Tracking relentless to its lair 

Each fever-bred progenitor of faith. 

Each fugitive ancestral fear? 

Still must I follow, as the wraith 

Of antique awe toward a wreck-making beach 

Drives derelict? 

Nay, rest, rest, my thought, 

Where long-loved sound and shadow teach 

Quietness to conscience overwrought. 

Harken! The choristers, the white-robed priest 

Move thro' the chapel dim 

Sounding of warfare and the victor's palm, 

Of valiant marchings, of the feast 

Spread for the pilgrim in a haven'd calm. 

How on the first lips of my steadfast race 

Sounded that battle hymn, 

Quaint heaven-vauntings, with God's gauntlet flung, 

To me bequeathed, from age to age, 

My challenge and my heritage! 

"The Lord is in His holy place" — 



CERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POETS 165 

How in their ears the herald voice has rung! 

Now will I make bright their sword, 

Will pilgrim in their ancient path, 

Will haunt the temple of their Lord ; 

Truth that is neither variable nor hath 

Shadow of turning, I will find 

In the wise ploddings of their faithful mind; 

Of finding not, as in this frustrate hour 

By question hounded, waylaid by despair, 

Yet in these uses shall I know His power 

As the warm flesh by breathing knows the air. 

futile comfort ! My faith-hungry heart 
Still in your sweetness tastes a poisonous sour; 
Far off, far off I quiver 'neath the smart 

Of old indignities and obscure scorn 
Indelibly on man's proud spirit laid. 
That now in time's ironic masquerade 
Minister healing to the hurt and worn! 
What are those streams that from the altar pour 
Where goat and ox and human captive bled 
To feed the blood-lust of the murderous priest? 

1 cannot see where Christ's dear love is shed, 
So deep the insatiate borrow washes red 
Flesh-stains and frenzy-sears and gore. 
Beneath that Cross, whereon His hands outspread, 
What forest shades behold what shameful rites 

Of maidenhood surrendered to the beast 

In obscene worship on midsummer nights! 

What imperturbable disguise 

Enwraps these organs with a chaste restraint 

To chant innocuous hymns and Utanies 

For sinner and adoring saint. 

Which yet inherit like an old blood-taint 

Some naked caperings in the godliest tune, — 

Goat-songs and jests strong with the breath of Pan, 

That charmed the easy cow-girl and her man 

In uncouth tryst beneath a scandalous moon! 

Ah, could I hearken with their trust, 

Or see with their pure-seeing eyes 



i66 NEW VOICES 

Who of the frame of these dear mysteries 

Were not too wise! 

Why cannot I, as in a stronger hour, 

Outface the horror that defeats me now? 

Have I not reaped complacent the rich power 

That harvest from this praise and bowing low? 

On this strong music have I mounted up, 

At yonder rail broke bread, and shared the holy cup, 

And on that cross have hung, and felt God's pain 

Sorrowing, sorrowing, till the world shall end. 

Not from these forms my questionings come 

That serving truth are purified, 

But from the truth itself, the way, the goal, 

One challenge vast that strikes faith dumb — 

If truth be fickle, who shall be our guide? 

"Truth that is neither variable, nor hath 

Shadow of turning?" Ah, where turns she not! 

Where yesterday she stood, 

Now the horizon empties — lo, her steps 

Where yonder scholar woos, are hardly cold, 

Yet shall he find her never, but the thought 

Manthng within him like her blood 

Shall from his eloquence fade, and leave his words 

Flavor'd with vacant quaintness for his son. 

What crafty patience, scholar, hast thou used, 

Useless ere it was begun — 

What headless waste of wing, 

Beating vainly round and roimd! 

In no one Babel were the tongues confused, 

But they who handle truth, from sound to sound 

Master another speech continuously. 

Deaf to familiar words, our callous ear 

Will quiver to the edge of utterance strange; 

When truth to God's truth-weary sight draws near, 

Cannot God see her till she suffer change? 

Must ye then change, my vanished youth. 

Home customs of my dreams? 

Change and farewell! 

Farewell, your lost phantasniic truth 



CERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POETS 167 

That will not constant dwell, 

But flees the passion of our eyes 

And leaves no hint behind her 

Whence she dawns or whither dies, 

Or if she live at all, or only for a moment seems. 

Here tho' I only dream I find her, 

Here will I watch the twilight darken. 

Yonder the scholar's voice spins on 

Mesh upon mesh of loveless fate; 

Here will I rest while truth deserts him still. 

What hath she left thee, Brother, but thy voice? 

After her, have thy will. 

And happy be thy choice! 

Here rather will I rest, and harken 

Voices longer dead but longer loved than thine. 

Yet still my most of peace is more unrest. 

As one who plods a summer road 

Feels the coolness his own motion stirs, 

But when he stops the dead heat smothers him. 

Here in this calm my soul is weariest. 

Each question with malicious goad 

Pressing the choice that still my soul defers 

To visioned hours not thus eclipsed and dim, 

Lest in my haste I deem 

That truth's invariable part 

Is her eluding of man's heart. 

Farewell, calm priest who pacest slow 

After the stalwart-marching choir! 

Have men thro' thee taught God their dear desire? 

Hath God thro' thee absolved sin? 

What is thy benediction, if I go 

Sore perplexed and wrought within? 

Open the chapel doors, and let 

Boisterous music play us out 

Toward the flaring molten west 

Whither the nerve-racked day is set; 

Let the loud world, flooding back. 

Gulf us in its hungry rout; 

Rest? What part have we in rest? 



1 68 NEW VOICES 

Boy with the happy face and hurrying feet, 

Who with thy friendly cap's salute 

Sendest bright hail across the college street, 

If thou couldst see my answering lips, how mute, 

How loth to take thy student courtesy! 

What truth have I for thee? 

Rather thy wisdom, lad, impart. 

Share thy gift of strength with me. 

Still with the past I wrestle, but the future girds thy heart. 

Clutter of shriveled yesterdays that clothe us Hke a shell. 

Thy spirit sloughs their bondage off, to walk newborn and free. 

All things the human heart hath learned — God, heaven, earth, and 

heU— 
Thou weighest not for what they were, but what they still may be. 
Whether the scholar delve and mine for faith-wreck buried deep. 
Or the priest his rules and holy rites, letter and spirit, keep; 
Toil or trust in breathless dust, they shall starve at last for truth; 
Scholar and priest shall live from thee, who art eternal youth. 
Holier if thou dost tread it, every path the prophets trod; 
Clearer where thou dost worship, rise the ancient hymns to God; 
Not by the priest but by thy prayers are altars sanctified; 
Strong with new love where thou dost kneel, the cross whereon Christ 

died. 

Johi Erskine 

AROUND THE SUN* 

The weazen planet Mercury, 

Whose song is done, — 
Rash heart that drew too near 

His dazzHng lord the Sun! — 
Forgets that Hfe was dear, 
So shrivelled now and sere 
The gobhn planet Mercury. 

But Venus, thou mysterious, 

Enveiled one, 
Fairest of lights that fleet 

Around the radiant Sun, 

•From "The Retinue and Other Poems," copyright, 1918, by E. P. Button & Co. 



CERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POETS 169 

Do not thy pulses beat 
To music blithe and sweet, 
O Venus, veiled, mysterious? 

And Earth, our shadow-haunted Earth, 

Hast thou, too, won 
The graces of a star 

From the glory of the Sun? 
Do poets dream afar 
That here all lustres are, 
Upon our bUnd, bewildered Earth? 

We dream that mighty forms on Mars, 

With wisdom spun 
From subtler brain than man's. 

Are hoarding snow and sun. 
Wringing a few more spans 
Of life, fierce artisans, 
From their deep-grooved, worn planet Mars. 

But thou, colossal Jupiter, 

World just begun, 
Wild globe of golden steam, 

Chief nurshng of the Sun, 
Transcendest human dream. 
That faints before the gleam 
Of thy vast splendor, Jupiter. 

And for w^hat rare delight, 

Of woes to shun, 
Of races increate. 

New lovers of the Sun, 
Was Saturn ringed with great 
Rivers illuminate. 
Ethereal jewel of delight? 

Far from his fellows, Uranus 

Doth lonely run 
In his appointed ways 

Around the sovereign Sun, — 



I70 NEW VOICES 

Wide journeys that amaze 
Our weak and toiling gaze, 
Searching the path of Uranus. 

But on the awful verge 

Of voids that stun 
The spirit, Neptune keeps 

The frontier of the Sun. 
Over the deeps on deeps 
He glows, a torch that sweeps 
The circle of that shuddering verge. 

On each bright planet waits 

Oblivion, 
Who casts beneath her feet 

Ashes of star and sun; 
But when all ruby heat 
Is frost, a Heart shall beat, 
Where God within the darkness waits. 

Katharine Lee Bates 

THE FLIGHT 

O Wild Heart, track the land's perfume, 

Beach-roses and moor-heather! 
All fragrances of herb and bloom 

Fail, out at sea, together. 
O follow where aloft find room 

Lark-song and eagle-feather! 
All ecstasies of throat and plume 

Melt, high on yon blue weather. 

O leave on sky and ocean lost 

The flight creation dareth; 
Take wings of love, that mounts the most; 

Find fame, that furthest fareth! 
Thy flight, albeit amid her host 

Thee, too, night star-like beareth. 
Flying, thy breath on heaven's coast, 

The infinite outweareth. 



CERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POETS 171 



"Dead o'er us roll celestial fires; 

Mute stand Earth's ancient beaches; 
Old thoughts, old instincts, old desires, 

The passing hour outreaches; 
The soul creative never tires — 

Evokes, adores, beseeches; 
And that heart most the god inspires 

Whom most its wildness teaches. 

"For I will course through faUing years, 

And stars and cities burning; 
And I will march through dying cheers 

Past empires unreturning; 
Ever the world-flame reappears 

Where mankind power is earning, 
The nations' hopes, the people's tears, 

One with the wild heart yearning." 

George Edward Woodberry 



My lady ne'er hath given herself to me 

In mortal ways, nor on my eyes to hold 

Her image; in a flying marble fold 
Of Hellas once I saw eternity 
Flutter about her form; all nature she 

Inspirits, but round her being there is rolled 

The inextinguishable beauty old 
Of the far shining mountains and the sea. 

Now all my manhood doth enrich her shrine 

Where first the young boy stored all hope, all fear. 

Fortune and fame and love be never mine. 
Since, seeking those, to her I were less dear! 

Albeit she hides herself in the divine, 
Always and everywhere I feel her near. 

George Edward Woodberry 



172 NEW VOICES 



PATH FLOWER* 

A red-cap sang in Bishop's wood, 

A lark o'er Colder 's lane, 
As I the April pathway trod 

Bound west for Willesden. 

At foot each tiny blade grew big 

And taller stood to hear. 
And every leaf on every twig 

Was Hke a little ear. 

As I too paused, and both ways tried 
To catch the rippling rain, — 

So still, a hare kept at my side 
His tussock of disdain, — • 

Behind me close I heard a step, 

A soft pit-pat surprise. 
And looking round my eyes fell deep 

Into sweet other eyes; 

The eyes like wells, where sun lies too, 
So clear and trustful brown, 

Without a bubble warning you 
That here's a place to drown. 

"How many miles?" Her broken shoes 

Had told of more than one. 
She answered like a dreaming Muse, 

"I came from Islington." 

"So long a tramp?" Two gentle nods 

Then seemed to Hft a wing, 
And words fell soft as willow-buds, 

"I came to find the Spring." 

A timid voice, yet not afraid 

In ways so sweet to roam, 
As it with honey bees had played 

And could no more go home. 

* Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribner's Sons. 



CERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POETS 173 

Her home! I saw the human lair, 

I heard the hucksters bawl, 
I stifled with the thickened air 

Of bickering mart and stall. 

Without a tuppence for a ride, 

Her feet had set her free. 
Her rags, that decency defied, 

Seemed new with liberty. 

But she was frail. Who would might note 

The trail of hungering 
That for an hour she had forgot 

In wonder of the Spring. 

So shriven by her joy she glowed 

It seemed a sin to chat. 
(A tea-shop snuggled off the road; 

Why did I think of that?) 

Oh, frail, so frail! I could have wept, — 

But she was passing on, 
And I but muddled "You'll accept 

A penny for a bun?" 

Then up her little throat a spray 

Of rose climbed for it must; 
A wilding lost till safe it lay 

Hid by her curls of rust; 

And I saw modesties at fence 

With pride that bore no name; 
So old it was she knew not whence 

It sudden woke and came; 

But that which shone of all most clear 

Was startled, sadder thought 
That I should give her back the fear 

Of life she had forgot. 



174 



NEW VOICES 

And I blushed for the world we'd made, 

Putting God's hand aside, 
Till for the want of sun and shade 

His Uttle children died; 

And blushed that I who every year 

With Spring went up and down, 
Must greet a soul that ached for her 

With "penny for a bun!" 

Struck as a thief in holy place 

Whose sin upon him cries, 
I watched the flowers leave her face, 

The song go from her eyes. 

Then she, sweet heart, she saw my rout. 

And of her charity 
A hand of grace put softly out 

And took the coin from me. 

A red-cap sang in Bishop's wood, 

A lark o'er Golder's lane; 
But I, alone, still glooming stood. 

And April plucked in vain; 

Till Hving words rang in my ears 

And sudden music played: 
Out of such sacred thirst as hers 

The world shall be remade. 

Afar she turned her head and smiled 

As might have smiled the Spring, 
And humble as a wondering child 

I watched her vanishing. 

Olive Tilford Dargan 



CERTAIN RADICAL POETS 

An old rhetoric, used in schoolrooms about twenty years ago, 
defines a figure of speech as "an intentional departure from the 
ordinary form, order, construction or meaning of words, intended 
to give emphasis, clearness, variety or beauty." This definition 
might be paraphrased to define the radical poetry of the moderns. 
Indeed a radical poet, like his poetry, may be called a figure of 
speech! For he departs intentionally from the ordinary form, 
order, construction or meaning of words in poetry, intending to 
give his work a new emphasis, clearness, variety and beauty. 

Conservatives say that departures of this kind are fatal mis- 
takes. They even hint that radical poets do not depart inten- 
tionally, but perforce, because the traditional ways of English 
poetry are too strait for their errant temperaments. This is 
easy to say, but difficult to prove. We shall learn too Httle 
good of radicals from the conversation of conservatives. To 
learn about radical poets we must read their poems and ask our- 
selves whether we can find the new ''emphasis, clearness, variety 
and beauty." 

Who, then, are the radical poets? As defined for purposes of 
this discussion, they are the poets whose craftsmanship is new 
and experimental. They may be, also, poets whose ideas on 
social problems are radical. Or they may be conservatives in 
their thought of life, and radicals only in their ways of making 
poems. That sometimes happens. Sometimes, also, it happens 
that poets who use the traditional forms of English verse are as 
radical in their social beliefs as their brothers who write free 
verse. Wliat is said here is intended to apply only to poets who 
make their poems in the new or radical ways. 

It is impossible to discuss them all. Many of them, moreover, 
have been mentioned in other chapters. Amy Lowell, of whom 
much has been said already, is an arch-radical. The Imagists, 

175 



176 NEW VOICES 

whose work was described in association with the discussion of 
images and symbols, have founded their important radical school. 
But no introduction to contemporary poetry would be complete 
without comment on the work of several other groups of radical 
poets. 

The chief poets of the radical movement who are not Imagists 
can be classified together as oratorical, humanitarian radicals. 
They have much in common. Most of them are strong social 
democrats and to a certain extent propagandists in their poetry. 
They all seem to love life — even violently. They are possessed 
of strong emotions to which they give direct, eloquent, sometimes 
fulsome expression. To a certain extent they are iconoclasts. 
Their images and S3mibols are often vivid and impressive. Their 
diction is sometimes very good and sometimes very bad. Their 
rhythms are long, undulating, often broken and uncertain, 
sometimes very tiresome, at their best sonorous and beautiful. 
But all too often, in trying to create poems without using the 
traditional patterns, they have tried to create poems with no 
perceptible patterns. When they have tried to do this they have 
usually failed to make poetry. 

The artistic ideal of the humanitarian radicals, if one can 
guess it from their work, is the ideal of oratory — a man pouring 
out his heart before his fellows. They would overwhelm us with 
torrents of emotion. They use language that the crowd under- 
stands. They are as eloquent as good political speakers. But 
they are seldom designers, makers. If their work is to live, it 
must be by virtue of the truth in it, by virtue of the value of the 
thoughts and emotions expressed (which value will be tested by 
time), not by virtue of pattern or melody. 

The following hues taken from Clement Wood's perfervid 
apostrophe to the world in " Spring " are typical of much of the 
least interesting work of this group: 

"Hey, old world, old lazy-bones, wake to the Spring-tune! 
The music of the spheres is quickened to a jig, — 
Wobble a one-step along your flashing orbit, with the moon for your 
light-tripping partner ! " 



CERTAIN RADICAL POETS i77 

Such lines as these, without melody, without coherent beauty of 
design, tossed off at random, apparently, attempt a crude sub- 
limity, but succeed only in being saucy. They slap Life jocosely 
on the shoulder and chuck the Universe under the chin. 

It is only fair to Mr. Wood to say that he has done much better 
things than this. He has written interesting poems and he says 
some things worth saying, like these lines from " A Prayer:" 

"Keep me from dream-ridden indolence, 
That softens the sinews of my spirit. 

Send me forth, adventuring. 

From the quick mud of the giitter 

To the clasp of the thin golden fingers of the stars. 

Let me will life, 

And its freshening, hearty struggles." 

James Oppenheim, also a humanitarian radical, is a more 
mature poet than Clement Wood and his work has been before 
the pubhc longer. There is more of it to be considered and it 
deserves more careful consideration. Mr. Oppenheim thinks. 
He feels. And he speaks. As he himself says, in the poem 
called ^'Before Starting" in ''Songs For The New Age," 

"It was as if myself sat down beside me. 

And at last I could speak out to my dear friend. 

And tell him, day after day, of the things that were reshaping me." 

In this calm of sincere and profound soliloquy Mr. Oppenheim's 
best poems seem to have been written, for they carry the at- 
mosphere of cahn soHloquy with them. It sometimes happens 
that they are very short. Such a poem is "The Runner in The 

Skies." 

"Who is the runner in the skies. 

With her blowing scarf of stars. 

And our Earth and sim hovering like bees about her blossoming heart? 

Her feet are on the winds, where space is deep, 

Her eyes are nebulous and veiled, 

She hurries through the night to a far lover." 



178 NEW VOICES 

The same virtue is in ''The Greatest," "Quick As a Humming- 
bird," ''No End of Song," "Larkspur" and "Said The Sun." 

"Said the sun: I that am immense and shaggy flame, 

Sustain the small ones yonder: 

But what do they do when their half of the Earth is turned from me? 

Poor dark ones, denied my Ught. 

A Httle brain, however, was on that other half of the planet . . . 
And so there were lamps." 

Many of these short poems reveal Mr. Oppenheim at his best. 
They are concise, thoughtful, imaginative, and have the quiet 
charm of meditative speech. They make places for themselves 
in the minds of readers, and remain. 

But Mr. Oppenheim does not always seem to be chatting 
quietly with himself about the things that are reshaping 
him. Often he is so vociferous that it is easy to picture him 
pacing a platform, talking with undeniable vigor to himself or 
to the multitude and making himself heard. In "Civilization" 
he is far more the orator than the poet. He is talking loud and 
scornfully. 

** Civilization! 

Everybody kind and gentle, and men giving up their seats in the car 

for the women . . . 
What an ideal! 
How bracing! 

Is this what we want? 

Have so many generations lived and died for this? 

There have been Crusades, persecutions, wars, and majestic arts, 

There have been murders and passions and horrors since man was in 

the jungle ... 
What was this blood-toll for? 
Just so that everybody could have a full belly and be well-mannered?" 

This is very interesting, but is it poetry? Here we have stimu- 
lating thought and honest feeling put into lengths of exclama- 



CERTAIN RADICAL POETS I79 

tory language. But that is about all. We find no pattern in 
rhythm, imagery, or symboHsm. We are glad of the stimulating 
thought and honest emotion. They are refreshing and much 
better for us than an aesthetic composition in which specious 
thoughts and shallow feehngs are masked. Such lines may serve 
to arouse us from intellectual and spiritual lethargy. But the 
chances are that we shall never repeat them to ourselves for the 
joy of repeating them. We shall not cherish and remember 
lines Hke these as we should cherish and remember poems by 
William Vaughn Moody, Vachel Lindsay or Robert Frost. 
They will not make their own places and abide with us as Mr. 
Oppenheim's best poems will. 

By far the finest piece of Uterature that James Oppenheim has 
produced is a dramatic poem called "Night." At night a priest, 
a scientist and a poet are met together under the stars and they 
confer together, teUing one another what they think of the 
universe and all that therein is. Then a woman enters, carrying 
a burden, her dead baby in her arms, and seeks of each of them 
in turn the answer to the riddle of pain and sorrow. She is not 
satisfied with any answer and turns away from them all to defy 
the Power that lets such things be. Then comes the man, 
her husband, and, because he needs her, she turns away from 
death and goes back to life with him. Her maternal pity takes 
her mate to be her child. The priest says, "Forgive these 
children, Lord God!" The scientist says, "Ignorance is indeed 
bhss!" The poet says: 

"The secret of life? 

He gives it to her, she gives it to him . . . 

But who shall tell of it? Who shall know it?" 

That is the story, a very simple story. The beauty of the poem 
is in the fact that it is an admirable piece of sympathetic unagi- 
nation. Mr. Oppenheim knows the thought of the priest, the 
scientist and the poet; he has shown very clearly how these three 
typical personalities see life. He has known the emotions of the 



i8o NEW VOICES 

man. He has fathomed the sorrow of the woman. He has faith- 
fully revealed truths that can be considered universal. 

"Night " is very well written. The rhythm of the speeches is 
dignified. And the oratorical style, not well adapted, as a rule, 
to the uses of subjective, lyrical poetry, is quite appropriate 
in this dramatic poem in which are several speakers, in which 
each speaker is a type, a part of a pattern worked out in ideas. 
The language is warm and rich, simple and human and suggestive 
of subtle meanings. The priest's first question and the woman's 
answer are masterly. Says the priest, ''Your child has died. . ." 
The woman answers, "My baby is dead. . ." The priest uses 
the general and impersonal word, "child." The woman uses the 
personal and more intimate word, "baby." The priest refers to 
an event that has taken place, "has died." The woman uses 
the present tense of her own sorrow, "is dead." Mr. Oppen- 
heim ought to write more poems of this kind. 

Probably one of the greatest of radical poets is Carl Sandburg. 
His manner is oratorical, like Mr. Oppenheim's, but he varies his 
rhythms with greater cunning and he is a greater artist. Some 
of his poems are very shapely in their clean-cut power of design. 
At their best his poems make one think of Rodin. They are the 
words that correspond to Rodin's lines. And in all of Mr. 
Sandburg's work we are conscious of a big, kind personahty, 
a man speaking, a person present in language. He is the man 
who talks. In reading his books we are conscious of faith and 
virihty, wise scorn, buoyant anger and great tenderness. Even 
those who read Mr. Sandburg's work without agreement, with- 
out much sympathy, are likely to say, "Well, an3^ay, he is a 
man." So true is this that a cautious critic is likely to ask him- 
self, "Do I hke this because it is poetry or because a manly 
personality is speaking?" Sometimes it is wise to ask this ques- 
tion. One may well ask whether the eloquent lines called "I 
Am The People, The Mob," are the hnes of a poem or 
the Unes of an impassioned speech on the destiny of the 
masses. 



CERTAIN RADICAL POETS i8i 

"I am the people— the mob— the crowd— the mass. 

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me? 

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world's food and 

clothes. 
I am the audience that witnesses history." 

This is rather more eloquent than poetic. It has value as an 
expression of personality. It has a rhythm of staccato speech. 
But it is plain statement, after all. It lacks the lifting power 
of poetry. Nor do the lines about Chicago, the harangue " To 
A Contemporary Bunkshooter," and the curse spoken against 
Becker seem to be poems, although poetic phrases are plentiful 
in them and although, in a certain sense, they do vividly share 
Hfe. 

But this only tells a part of the story. Often, very often in- 
deed, Mr. Sandburg is a poet of rhythm, symbol, and magical 
design. A poet he was when he wrote "Uplands in May," 
"Jan Kubelik," "Sheep," "Cool Tombs," "Back Yard," "The 
Harbor," "River Roads," "Early Moon," "Have Me," "Hand- 
fuls," "Bringers" and many other poems. 

More than any other poet who has found a public, Mr. Sand- 
burg uses the speech of the common people of America, with its 
colloquialisms and its slang. In "Wilderness" is the following 
paragraph. 

"O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony 
head, under my red-valve heart— and I got something else: it is a 
man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and 
lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows- 
Where— For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing 
and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the 
wilderness." 

Only the common people and children sometimes use "got 'in 
that way. It is the familiar folk speech to which words like 
"zoo" and "pal" belong. Such words would not be taboo for 
conservative poets in narrative or dramatic poetry, but no con- 



i82 NEW VOICES 

servative poet would take them upon his own lips in his own 
speech or song. Similarly Mr. Sandburg, in his poem about 
those who "go forth before daybreak" (strangely called a 
"psalm"), says that the policeman buys shoes "slow and care- 
ful." The use of the adjective for the adverb is another part of 
the homely talk of the common people. Sometimes one wonders 
why Mr. Sandburg uses these colloquialisms. As part of the 
talk of a character in a story, they would be piquant and flavor- 
ous. But why should Mr. Sandburg, the poet, use them when 
he himself is speaking to his readers? If one might hazard 
a guess, it is simply because he likes the folk speech, the plain 
man's way of saying things, so much that he would rather be 
picturesque and colloquial than keep the venerable beauty of 
pure English. 

Mr. Sandburg has written poems of several kinds, as we have 
seen already, oratorical poems, picture poems, brief lyrical 
poems. His work is growing in power and in beauty. At first 
much of it was loud and brash. Now much of it is quaint and 
full of gentleness. And best of all it is close to the heart of the 
folk, whence the best poetry comes. 

Almost as much as radicals differ from conservatives do radi- 
cals like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound differ from radicals like 
Carl Sandburg and James Oppenheim. Their emotions are not 
redundant, but spare. Their style is not oratorical. Their voices 
are not orotund, but sly, insinuating, satirical, and, occasionally, 
shrill. They are poets of the world and very far from the folk. 
They are undeniably alarmingly clever. Notice these lines from 
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot: 

"Let us go then, you and I, 

When the evening is spread out against the sky 

Like a patient etherized upon a table." 

The comparison would never come into the mind of a stupid man, 
of an unsophisticated man. It is clever, also, to speak of the 
" damp souls of housemaids." It is clever to say that the laughter 
of a certain Mr. Apollinax "was submarine and profound." 



CERTAIN RADICAL POETS 183 

It is such cleverness that one finds in Mr. EHot's work. It is 
for such things, as much as for anything else, that his admirers 
praise him. His sketches of personahty are dry and hard. 
His comment on the complex hves of worldlings is all enter- 
taining. But a poet must be more than clever and entertaining 
to merit the attention of many readers. A brittle ^stheticism 
is not enough. 

As for Mr. Pound, it is difficult to write about him. He is 
so clever that one mentions him with trepidation, knowing how 
much amused he would be at the wrong thing said. The truth 
of the matter is that Mr. Pound is too clever to be a poet. He 
ought to spend his time in discovering geniuses and explain- 
ing talent and genius to a less clever world. For whether one 
agrees with him or not, he is frequently interesting as a 
critic. 

Now in Mr. Pound's poetry, as in his prose criticism, we find a 
very keen-edged intellect cutting and slashing at stupidity. 
In criticism this may be all very well. But in poetry it is irritat- 
ing. A poem subtly charged with conscious superiority will 
hardly give pleasure to many readers, because they themselves 
never have cause to know what conscious superiority is like, 
and therefore can not share the mood. Very likely Mr. Pound 
does not expect nor even wish his poems to give pleasure to 
many readers. He would prefer, probably, to please a few hun- 
dred carefully selected intellects. Or perhaps he would please 
only himself and is content to amuse the dull world. Most of 
his poems are no better than clever. Take these lines, for ex- 
ample, from "Further Instructions:" 

"You are very idle, my songs; 
I fear you will come to a bad end. 

You stand about the streets. You loiter at the corners and busstops, 

You do next to nothing at all. 

You do not even express our inner nobility; 

You will come to a very bad end. 

* * * * 



i84 NEW VOICES 

But you, newest song of the lot, 

You are not old enough to have done much mischief. 

I will get you a green coat out of China 

With dragons worked upon it. 

I will get you the scarlet silk trousers 

From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa Maria Novella; 

Lest they say we are lacking in taste. 

Or that there is no caste in this family." 

The ordinary person is bewildered by lines like these. It dis- 
turbs him to have a poet self-consciously address his poems and 
make fun of his readers at the same time. Louis Untermeyer, 
our shrewd American critic, has made a series of amusing paro- 
dies of Mr. Pound's style which the ordinary person will enjoy 
rather more than the originals. They are included in his book 
of parodies " — ^And Other Poets," a book which will be a 
delight to students of the style of contemporary poets. 

But if all his works were of this kind, it would not be worth 
while to discuss Mr. Pound as a poet at all. Sometimes he is 
guilty of a catcall from the top gallery. But there are serene 
musical interludes. His translations from the Chinese are inter- 
esting. His "Ballad For Gloom" has a certain gallantry which 
the brave, who have known bitterness, will understand and feel. 
The rhythm of it is strong, the feeling is strong. His "Ballad 
of The Goodly Fere" is one of the finest poems about Christ that 
contemporary poets have given us. In this poem Christ is the 
brave man, the hero. 

"A master of men was the Goodly Fere, 
A mate of the wind and sea. 
If they think they ha' slain our Goodly Fere 
They are fools eternally. 

" I ha' seen him eat o' the honey-comb 
Sin' they nailed him to the tree." 

Very beautiful, also, are some of the lines in his "Dance 
Figure," a poem written "For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee." 



CERTAIN RADICAL POETS 185 

"Dark-eyed, 

woman of my dreams, 
Ivory sandaled, 

There is none like thee among the dancers, 
None with swift feet. 

1 have not found thee in the tents. 
In the broken darkness. 

I have not found thee at the well-head 
Among the women with pitchers. 

Thine arms are as young saplings under the bark; 
Thy face as a river with lights." 

The scriptural style of these lines is worthy of note. If only Mr. 
Pound were less clever, he might be a very good poet. 

Alfred Kreymborg, the leader in the group of poets generally 
called "The Others" from the name of their magazine and their 
anthology, is a poet of another kind. He is a whimsical radical, 
the leader of the whimsical radicals. His poems are like the 
little oddments one finds while rummaging in an old curiosity 
shop. Some of them are ridiculous and valueless, some quaint 
and amusing ; a few are beautiful. His poorer poems are shadowy 
and trivial. They lack S3mimetry of design, charm of rhythm 
and vitality of emotion. But his best poems make up for cer- 
tain deficiencies of rhythm and design and rather slight emotion 
— the most serious lack — by their charm of really delicate fancy 
and by their quaint symbolism. Their beauty is minute and 
fragile, like the beauty of a miniature. Some of the best of his 
poems are "Idealists," "Old Manuscript," "Earth Wisdom.," 
and "Improvisation." 

Mr. Kreymborg is the author of " Six Plays For Poet Mimes," 
six entertaining little dramas in free verse. They have been 
played with success at a number of the "Little Theaters" and 
by groups of students. Each of these plays, however, may be 
considered as a pattern in which the words are only an outline. 
Or perhaps it would be truer to say that the words are intended 
to be a running comment on the action. Certainly the words are 



i86 NEW VOICES 

not complete alone, without action. Very likely that should 
augur well for them as plays. In much tliat is called "poetic 
drama " the words are decidedl}^ in the way of all that happens on 
the stage; they hinder and retard the action. In Mr. Kreym- 
borg's plays that could not be true. For to the reader they 
seem to need the action that they may fulfill themselves. As 
poems to be read they are incomplete. 

The same thing might be said of another play by another poet, 
'' Grotesques: A Decoration In Black And Wliite/' by Cloyd 
Head. This is a more serious work than the plays of Alfred 
Kreymborg, and of greater importance. But it is a poetic 
drama to be played rather than a dramatic poem to be read. 
Mr. Head has been merciless and unflinching in cutting out 
every bit of language that is unnecessary in the play when it is 
acted. Perhaps that is why ''Grotesques" won the enthusiastic 
praise of Harriet Monroe and of many competent critics when 
it was first played in Chicago at the Chicago Little Theater. 
But it should not be underestimated as a poem. Grim in its 
philosophy, an ironical comment on human achievement and 
destiny, it is one of the most interesting radical poems of the 
period. But it is too long to be reprinted as a whole and it is 
difficult to do it justice by quotation, since it is, as has been 
said, a poetic play, a conventionalized "decoration" to be seen 
with the eyes and heard with the ears at the same time. It is 
only fair to say of Mr. Head that he has undeniable talent and is 
a scrupulous and uncompromising artist. He is likely to con- 
tribute much genuine beauty to contemporary Hterature. 

Of the radical poets in general it may be said that most of 
their work will die, and die very soon. But that may be said 
just as truly of conservative poets. Nearly all of the work of 
nearly all poets dies, and dies soon. And it is never possible 
for any generation to know which of its achievements will en- 
dure and become immortal. Contemporary criticism is always 
a mere preliminary test before the final examination, a straw 
vote taken before election day. 



CERTAIN RADICAL POETS 187 

But the history of the arts and of mankind seems to show that 
often it is the great radicals of one generation who survive and 
become types of the achievement of that generation, and are 
considered conservative by succeeding generations. Therefore 
radical tendencies should be studied carefully. It is not neces- 
sary, of course, to ponder the inanities and insanities of all 
seekers after novelty and sensationalism, any more than it is 
necessary to give thoughtful consideration to poems that are, 
obviously, feeble imitations of Tennyson and Keats. The great- 
est scholars can not understand the chatter of daws, the shriek- 
ing of jays. But wherever a radical poet can be found who is 
giving something good out of himself and giving it sincerely, 
he should have as good a hearing as conservatives are certain 
to get, even if his way of giving expression to his feehngs be 
a new way with which we are not familiar. Perhaps he should 
have a rather better hearing than the conservative for the simple 
reason that he brings something new which is not generally 
understood. Our fair-minded readers and just critics should 
be sure that they know what the new poet is trying to do before 
they respond to it with harsh censure. For radical poets are 
poets who are making experiments that may lead to new ad- 
ventures in beauty for us all. 

For other reasons we should be generous with the strongest 
radical poets. Much poetry that has no value for posterity 
may have value for us in showing us the countenance of our own 
generation as in a mirror. Much that is lax, errant, wilful, 
slovenly, in the thought and feeling of this generation, will be 
shown in the work of our radical poets, just as much that is 
smug, complacent, drab, commonplace, will be reflected in the 
work of conservatives. Perhaps, after all, it is between the two 
extremes of conservatism and radicalism that we usually find 
the genius of beauty, the genius of truth and the genius of holi- 
ness. 



i88 NEW VOICES 



FROM "NIGHT 



A Priest, A Poet, A Scientist. 
Hilltop, in October: the stars shining. 

[The Priest kneels; the Scientist looks at the heavens through a 
telescope; the Poet writes in a little note-book.] 

THE PRIEST 

When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and 

the stars, which Thou hast ordained; 
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him, 
And the son of man, that Thou visitest him? 

THE SCIENTIST 

Algol which is dim, becomes again a star of the second magnitude. 

THE POET 

My beloved is far from this hilltop, where the firs breathe heavily, and 

the needles fall; 
But from the middle of the sea 
She, too, gazes on the lustrous stars of calm October, and in her 

heart 
She stands with me beneath these heavens — daintily blows 
Breath of the sighing pines, and from the loaded and bowed-down 

orchards and from the fields 
With smokes of the valley, peace steps up on this hill. 

THE PRIEST 

Thou art the Shepherd that strides down the Milky Way; 

Thou art the Lord, our God: glorified be Thy name and Thy works. 

I see Thee with Thy staff driving the star-sheep to the fold of dawn. 

THE SCIENTIST 

The Spiral Nebula in Ursa Major, that forever turns 
Slowly like a flaming pin-wheel . . . thus are worlds bom; 
Thus was the sun and all the planets a handful of million years 
ago. 



CERTAIN RADICAL POETS 189 

THE POET 

She is far from me . . . but in the cradle of the sea 
Sleepless she rocks, calling her beloved: he heeds her call: 
On this hilltop he picks the North Star for his beacon . . . 
For by that star the sailors steer, and beneath that star 
She and I are one in the gaze of the heavens. 

THE PRIEST 

[Slowly rising and turning to the others] 
Let us glorify the Creator of this magnificence of infinite Night, 
His footstool is the Earth, and we are but the sheep of this Shepherd. 

THE SCIENTIST 

Thus shall we only glorify ourselves, 

That of this energy that rolls and drives in suns and planets 

Are but the split-off forces with cunning brains. 

And questioning consciousness . . . Pray if you must — 

Only your own ears hear you, and only the heart in your treast 

Responds to the grandiose emotion. . . . See yonder star? 

That is the great Aldebaran, great in the night, 

Needing a whole sky, as a vat and a reservoir, which he fills with his 

flame. . . 
But no astronomer with his eye to his lenses 
Has seen ears on the monster. 

THE PRIEST 

Thou that hast never seen an atom, nor the ether thou pratest of, 
Thou that hast never seen the consciousness of man, 
What knowest thou of the invisible arms about this sky, 
And the Father that leans above us? 

THE POET 

We need know nothing of any Father 

When the grasses themselves, withering in October, stand up and sing 

their own dirges in the great west wind. 
And every pine is like a winter lodging house where the needles may 

remember the greenness of the world. 
And the great shadow is jagged at its top with stars, 



I90 NEW VOICES 

And the heart of man is as a wanderer looking for the h'ght in a win- 
dow, 
And the kiss and warm joy of his beloved. 

THE PRIEST 

Man of Song and Man of Science, 

Truly you are as people on the outside of a house. 

And one of you only sees that it is made of stone, and its windows of 

glass, and that fire burns in the hearth. 
And the other of you sees that the house is beautiful and very human, 
But I have gone inside the house, 
And I live with the host in that house 
And have broken bread with him, and drunk his wine, 
And seen the transfiguration that love and awe make in the brain. . . . 
For that house is the world, and the Lord is my host and my father: 
It is my father's house. 

THE SCIENTIST 

He that has gone mad and insane may call himself a king, 

And behold himself in a king's palace, with feasting, and dancing 

women, and with captains, 
And none can convince him that he is mad, 
Slave of hallucination. . . . 

We that weigh the atom and weigh a world in the night, and we 
Who probe down into the brain, and see how desire discolors reality, 
And we that see how chemical energy changes and transforms the 

molecule. 
So that one thing and another changes and so man arises — 
With neither microscope, nor telescope, nor spectroscope, nor finest 

violet ray 
Have we found any Father lurking in the intricate unreasonable drive 

of things 
And the strange chances of nature. 

THE POET 

O Priest, is it not enough that the world and a Woman are very 

beautiful, 
And that the works and tragic lives of men are terribly glorious? 



CERTAIN RADICAL POETS 191 

There is a dance of miracles, of miracles holding hands in a chain 
around the Earth and out through space to the moon, and to the 
stars, and beyond the stars, 

And to behold this dance is enough ; 

So much laughter, and secret looking, and ghmpses of wonder, and 
dreams of terror. . . . 

It is enough! it is enough! 

THE PRIEST 

Enough? I see what is enough! 

Machinery is enough for a Scientist, 

And Beauty is enough for a Poet; 

But in the hearts of men and women, and in the thirsty hearts of little 

children 
There is a hunger, and there is an unappeasable longing. 
For a Father and for the love of a Father . . . 
For the root of a soul is mystery, 
And the Night is mystery, 

And in that mystery men would open inward into Eternity, 
And know love, the Lord. 
Blessed be his works, and his angels, and his sons crowned with his 

glory! 

[A pause. The Woman with a burden in her arms comes in slowly.] 

James Oppenheim 

CLAY HILLS 

It is easy to mould the yielding clay. 

And many shapes grow into beauty 

Under the facile hand. 

But forms of clay are lightly broken; 

They will lie shattered and forgotten in a dingy corner. 

But underneath the slipping clay 

Is rock. . . . 

I would rather work in stubborn rock 

All the years of my life, 

And make one strong thing 

And set it in a high, clean place, 

To recall the granite strength of my desire. 

Jean Starr Untermeyer 



192 NEW VOICES 

COOL TOMBS 

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the 
copperheads and the assassin ... in the dust, in the cool tombs. 

And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash 
and collateral turned ashes ... in the dust, in the cool tombs. 

Pocahontas body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November 
or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? . . . 
in the dust, in the cool tombs? 

Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a 
hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns . . , tell me if 
the lovers are losers . . . tell me if any get more than the 
lovers ... in the dust ... in the cool tombs. 

Carl Sandburg 

LOAM 

In the loam we sleep, 
In the cool moist loam, 
To the lull of years that pass 
And the break of stars, 

From the loam, then, 
The soft warm loam, 

We rise: 
To shape of rose leaf, 
Of face and shoulder; 

We stand, then. 

To a whiff of life. 
Lifted to the silver of the sun 
Over and out of the loam 

A day. 

Carl Sandburg 



CERTAIN RADICAL POETS 193 

IDEALISTS 

Brother Tree: 

Why do you reach and reach? 

do you dream some day to touch the sky? 

Brother Stream: 

Why do you run and run? 

do you dream some day to fill the sea? 

Brother Bird: 

Why do you sing and sing? 

do you dream — 

Young Man; 

Why do you talk and talk and talk? 

Alfred Kreymborg 

OLD MANUSCRIPT 

The sky 

is that beautiful old parchment 

in which the sun 

and the moon 

keep their diary. 

To read it all, 

one must be a linguist 

more learned than Father Wisdom; 

and a visionary 

more clairvoyant than Mother Dream 

But to feel it, 

one must be an apostle: 

one who is more than intimate 

in having been, always, 

the only confidant — 

like the earth 

or the sea. 

Alfred Kreymborg 



HOW POEMS ARE MADE 

"Si'l fait beau temps," 
Disait un papillon volage, 
** S'il fait beau temps, 
Je vais folatrer dans les champs." 
"Et moi," lui dit Fabeille sage, 
" J'irai me mettre a mon ouvrage 
S'il fait beau temps." 

More than half of the people who think about poetry prefer 
to believe that the poet, like the butterfly, flutters gaily in the 
sunlight and sips honey. They like to think that because he is 
fed on the honey of inspiration his wings are glorious in flight. 
But poets themselves, and those who know most about them, 
tell us that they are as devout in labor as the proverbial bee. 
And unless poetry is a thing by itself, utterly unlike the other 
great arts, unlike music, sculpture, architecture, the dance, the 
drama, it is reasonable to suppose that labor must be a part of a 
poet's life and that there must be a travail before beauty is born. 

Yet these two theories, which we may as well call the butter- 
fly theory and the bee theory, are not necessarily irreconcilable. 
A poet does Hve creatively by virtue of inspiration. But in- 
spiration is not a thing pecuKar to poets. All mankind knows 
inspiration, and if it did not belong as truly to the housewife 
and the bricklayer and the stockbroker as to the poet, poets 
would have no understanding audience. But a poet is a poet 
by reason of his ability to do with inspiration what these others 
can not do with it or can not do so well. It is the poet who makes 
the delicate cell, the poem, in which the honey of inspiration 
is stored, to be a joy for all in the days when no flowers blossom 
and the world is dour and cold. That he may know how to make 
that cell the poet must work ! 

194 



HOW POEMS ARE MADE 195 

But fortunately, there are many ways of working, and sooner 
or later each poet finds his own best way. Some poets brood over 
poems a long time before they ever set down a word on paper, 
and then, when it is once set down, make very few changes. 
This is what Sara Teasdale does. And it is a method of work 
common to many makers of the best short lyrics. It is a difficult 
method for poets whose days are full of other things than poetry, 
for there is always the danger of losing the poem. But to hold 
a poem in the mind and let it grow there is a fine and natural 
way of making it. Other poets write rapidly and make few 
alterations, but they write many, many poems which they re- 
gard only as practice-work and throw away. When they are 
content they give the poem to the public, but not otherwise. 
Such poets must have a well-developed critical faculty and must 
be able to choose wisely from their own works the things that 
are best. Robert Frost works in this way and seldom gives the 
world a poem which the world is not glad to receive. Still 
other poets write in the first flush of inspiration and then revise 
again and again until the perfect poem emerges out of a chaos 
of self-expression. Vachel Lindsay works in this way. He some- 
times re-writes his long poems thirty or forty times. And 
finally, there are poets who write very slowly and revise with 
great care. Such a poet is Carl Sandburg, a master of concise 
human speech. 

Moreover, the fact that a great poet can write a masterpiece 
as John Masefield wrote his "Cargoes," in a few minutes one 
Sunday morning, should not lead any young poets to accept 
the butterfly theory of poetry. When Mr. Masefield achieved 
that miracle he was already a master poet. The masters can 
all do things that can not be done by the pupils, by beginners. 
They have learned their craft. When the idea comes, when the 
keen emotion is felt, when they have found inspiration, they are 
ready. They are amply equipped for the task of giving form, to 
idea and mood and inspiration. And, moreover, in one way or 
another, the masters have earned that equipment b)^ hard work. 
They have learned what they know. They have-taught them- 



196 NEW VOICES 

selves how to do what they have done. Every poet, whether 
he reaHzes it or not (and often he does not reahze it), has hved 
through what may be called a "vocational education." The 
more we learn about the lives of poets the more certain we are 
that this is true. 

Fortunately very few poets were ever self-conscious about this 
vocational education. Very few have "taken courses" in the 
hope of learning "how to be poets." That would be almost 
criminal! But, if we could investigate, we should be likely to 
find out that nearly all good poets began, in childhood or early 
youth, to do certain things of their own voHtion and for their 
own satisfaction that were of undoubted value in preparation for 
poethood. 

Perhaps the poet-child showed a keen zest for rhythm and a 
marked desire to experiment with rhythmical tunes. Perhaps 
he loved to dance or to move his hands in time to the rhythm of 
music, or to watch the movement of great machines and attempt 
to count the time and give the stresses by tapping, or perhaps 
he even attempted to tap the staccato rhythms of a strongly 
accented bit of conversation. Perhaps his sense of rhythm was 
pleased by certain forms of athletic play and perhaps he tried 
to translate these rhythms into words. All of these ways of 
playing with rhythmical tunes might justly be called a w^ork of 
preparation for the making of poems. One poet, Margaret 
Widdemer, tells me that when she was a little girl she would go 
all alone into her grandmother's big parlor and dance there, 
without music, for sheer delight in the rhythms she could 
make. 

Later came a more self-conscious preparation for the life of a 
poet. The poet-child began to write poems. He would set down 
on a piece of paper his rhymes and rhythms and ideas and emo- 
tions. And he would gloat over these effusions in secret. When 
he had just written a poem he probably thought it the finest 
poem in the world. A few days, a few weeks, or a few months 
later he would be in despair about it. Then he would write an- 
other. Sometimes he would solemnly vow by Apollo and all 



HOW POEMS ARE MADE 197 

the Muses to give up poetry and become a real estate agent, or 
keep chickens. Then he would find out that it was impossible 
to give up poetry. It simply could not be done. And he would 
return to his first love and vow by Apollo and all the Muses 
that he would become a great poet. And this also was a part 
of the vocational education of the poet. For all good poets 
learn, sooner or later, that they can not give up poetry, that they 
must make it, and that they should make it as well as they 
possibly can. 

Another part of a poet's vocational education is learning to 
love the masterpieces of other poets. William Rose Benet, an 
accomphshed poet and an experienced editor, says: 

''I shall never forget walking the streets of Oakland, Cali- 
fornia, in the belief that I was another Francis Thompson selling 
matches or something, just after I had read his poem, 'Any 
Saint.' Of course I wasn't, but it did my poetic impulse untold 
good. I became such a lunatic on the subject of Francis Thomp- 
son that if I found ten words about him in any magazine — and 
there have been nearer a million written — I would gloat over 
them in ecstasy. I used to haunt the old Mercantile Library 
in San Francisco before it moved down town. I was then study- 
ing stenography in a business college. One noon I discovered 
in a back number of The English Review John Masefield's song 
about 

'A bosun in a blue coat bawling at the railing, 
Piping through a silver call that had a chain of gold.' 

That was a number of years before he was famous. The hour was 
enchanted for me till I got that stave by heart." 

Mr. Benet says it is the best thing in the world for young 
poets to "get drunk on the poetry of other poets, but they must 
be great poets, and the young poet must pick them out for him- 
self and because they meet the needs of his particular tempera- 
ment." But he is careful to add this word of advice, "Don't 
write the way they do! Imitate them outright if you like, for 
practice y hut recognize it as imitation. Don't reflect the minds and 



198 NEW VOICES 

usages of other people, no matter how much it seems the only 
way to write. It isn't. There are a thousand thousand ways to 
write. When you write, try to express yourself, not someone 
else." 

Such elder-brotherly advice from poets is hard to get except 
in personal conversation between old friends. As a general thing 
when anyone asks a poet how poems are made the poet looks up 
with pained bewilderment and says he does not know. Usually 
he is telling the truth. When he is making a poem he is so ab- 
sorbed in the creative labor that he can not watch the process 
carefully, or as one poet says, ^'hear his own clock tick." And 
when the poem is finished the process of its creation interests 
him very little. He has climbed into Paradise. Good. He 
will kick away the ladder by which he chmbed. 

The poet's stock answer for inquisitive ladies and other pry- 
ing persons who wish to know how his poems are made is, ''I 
don't know. They make themselves." This is a half-truth, 
and like most half-truths, it sounds very fine. True, the poet 
seldom does know just how his poems began to grow in his 
mind, whether they were suggested by a scent or color of the 
external world or by an inward conflict of emotions. True, he 
seldom knows just how he performs the glorious, concentrated 
intellectual labor that makes his moods vocal and communi- 
cable. And to say that poems make themselves is not a bad 
way of explaining all this. For unless poems do, in a certain 
sense, make themselves, they should not be made at all. Cer- 
tainly they should never be written to please a friend or an editor. 
If they are written simply as a result of some such suggestion 
from the outside, they are likely to be dull and lifeless. This 
accounts for the insipid quality of most "occasional poems." 
When people ask poets to be "occasional" they should permit 
them to be humorous and write mere verse. 

But we can hardly suppose that poems are made without the 
instrumentaUty of the human intellect! Indeed the more we 
know about poems the more certain we become that they are 
made by the whole personaUty of the poet. The mere fact that 



HOW POEMS ARE MADE 199 

they are ever made implies the process of creation! And any 
process is interesting if we can find out about it from those who 
have watched it and understood it and are able to analyze and 
describe. 

For this reason it is a great pleasure and privilege to be able 
to present Sara Teasdale's ideas on the subject of how poems are 
made. Sara Teasdale is well known for her brief, simple lyrics 
wherever EngUsh poetry is read, and what she has to say can be 
accepted safely as authoritative. She realizes, of course, that 
other kinds of poetry can be made by other poets in other ways. 
But this is one way and the results justify a careful considera- 
tion of the method. She says: 

*'My theory is that poems are written because of a state of 
emotional irritation. It may be present for some time before 
the poet is conscious of what is tormenting him. The emotional 
irritation springs, probably, from subconscious combinations of 
partly forgotten thoughts and feelings. Coming together, Uke 
electrical currents in a thunder storm, they produce a poem. A 
poem springs from emotions produced by an actual experience, 
or, almost as forcefully, from those produced by an imaginary 
experience. In either case, the poem is written to free the poet 
from an emotional burden. Any poem not so written is only a 
piece of craftsmanship. 

''Most poets find it easier to write about themselves than 
about anything else because they know more about themselves 
than about anything else. If a poet has a great gift, he may be 
able to speak for a whole race, creed or class simply by speaking 
for himself. But for a poet consciously to appoint himself the 
mouthpiece of a certain class or creed en masse, is dangerous 
business. If each poet will try to get himself down in black and 
white as concisely and honestly as he can, every kind of re- 
action to beauty and pain will finally be recorded. Each poet will 
make a record different from that of any of his fellows, and yet 
the record of each will be true. 

"Out of the fog of emotional restlessness from which a poem 
springs, the basic idea emerges sometimes slowly, sometimes 



2 00 NEW VOICES 

in a flash. This idea is known at once to be the light toward 
which the poet was groping. He now walks round and round 
it, so to speak, looking at it from all sides, trying to see which 
aspect of it is the most vivid. When he has hit upon what he 
beheves is his peculiar angle of vision, the poem is fairly begun. 
The first line comes floating toward him with a charming defi- 
niteness of color and music. In my own case the rhythm of a 
poem usually follows, in a general way, the rhythm of the first 
line. [This is what Lanier thought should be true. Author.] 
The form of the poem should be a clear window-pane through 
which you see the poem's heart. The form, as form, should be 
engrossing neither to the poet nor to the reader, who should be 
barely conscious of the form, the rhymes, or the rhythm. He 
should be conscious only of emotions given him, and unconscious 
of the medium by which they are transmitted. 

'' For generations readers have been accustomed to certain 
forms of rhythms and to certain rhyme-schemes. These are 
familiar. They carry the reader swiftly and easily to the heart 
of the poem. They do not astonish or bewilder him. The poet 
who chooses this older, more melodic music, and the regular 
chiming of the rhymes that usually goes with it, should use 
great care to vary these deftly and spontaneously. Otherwise 
his poem will be an unconvincing sing-song. 

'' Brief lyrical poems should be moulded in the poet's mind. 
They are far more fluid before they touch ink and paper than 
they ever are afterward. The warmth of the idea that generated 
the poem should make it clear, ductile, a finished creation, before 
it touches cold white paper. In the process of moulding his 
idea into a poem the poet will be at white heat of intellectual 
and emotional activity, bearing in mind that every word, every 
syllable, must be an unobtrusive and yet an indispensabla 
part of his creation. Every beat of his rhythm, the color of 
each word, the ring of each rhyme, must carry his poem, as a 
well-laid railway track carries a train of cars, smoothly to its 
destination. The poet must put far from him the amazing word, 
the learned allusion, the facile inversion, the clever twist of 



HOW POEMS ARE MADE 201 

thought, for all of these things will blur his poem and distract 
his reader. He must not overcrowd his lines with figures of 
speech, because, in piling these one upon another, he defeats 
his own purpose. The mind of the reader can not hold many im- 
pressions at one time. The poet should try to give his poem 
the quiet swiftness of flame, so that the reader will feel and not 
think while he is reading. But the thinking will come after- 
wards." 

William Rose Benet is another poet who has consented to say 
what he knows about how poems are made. His own poetry 
is not at all like Sara Teasdale's, although he has written a few 
fine subjective lyrics. His best poems have always a certain 
narrative interest and seem like stories of spiritual adventure. 
He carries us into far countries of the imagination to see strange 
sights and hear wild, engaging talk. He has a genius for the 
making of ballads and his poem, "The Horse Thief," half realism 
and half flambuoyant fancy, is one of the finest of the kind 
in recent literature. 

Mr. Benet's suggestions constitute a program for an intel- 
lectual athlete. This is part of what he says: 

" Sidney Lanier was of the behef that a poet should have sound 
scientific knowledge, should know biology, geology, archaeology 
as well as etymology. I should add psychology, sociology, and 
all the other ologies there are. This is almost ridiculous, you 
say. There is nothing ridiculous about it. A poet should swal- 
low the encyclopaedia, and then after that the dictionary. He 
should be a linguist if possible. He should be a business man. 
He should be able to meet any type of man on his own ground 
and understand what he is talking about. The poet should be 
able, also, to relate the thing discussed to the cosmos in general 
as the highly specialized individual is not able to relate it. A 
poet should know history inside and out and should take as 
much interest in the days of Nebuchadnezzar as in the days of 
Pierpont Morgan. Don't get the idea that you can only write 
about fairies — but there are plenty of fairies even on the Stock 
Exchange if you are attractive to fairies. They are whimsical 



ao2 NEW VOICES 

people, you know. But get interested in everything, and stay 
interested." 

If young poets were to accept this advice at its face value they 
would be nourishing impossible ambitions. But the thing that 
Mr. Benet means, the thing he is trying to emphasize in this 
paragraph, is a thing that young poets can achieve if they 
will, a certain breadth of sympathy and understanding that 
reaches through all pursuits and vocations to the common 
heart of mankind, and a certain breadth of interest in all 
that happens in the world, all that has happened or is likely to 
happen. 

When Mr. Benet goes on to talk of the actual process of mak- 
ing poems, we find that what he has to say is very interesting 
in relation to the kind of poems he writes, which ought to be the 
case, of course. He suggests, first of all, the acquisition of a good 
vocabulary, then a practice in visualization. ''Hunt up all the 
great paintings ancient or modern that you can see and saturate 
yourself in their mysteries of color. That will help your visuali- 
zation to be more than a cheap lithograph. Then, when you 
come to make a poem, visualize intensely. Try to see it as if it 
were a living scene with more than 'shadow shapes that come 
and go' moving through it. Then think of your visualization 
in terms of the greatest music you know. Hold that thought! 
Wrestle with it until you feel that somehow — God alone knows 
how — you can express it in words." 

Mr. Benet offers young poets several other bits of excellent 
advice. "Get your poems by heart," he says, "and go around 
annoying people by mouthing to yourself." This is really very 
important, for it is almost the only way that the young poet 
has of learning how words sound in sequences. Mr. Benet has 
some good things to say, also, about writing for the love of ex- 
pression and writing for money. 

" If you want to write for money, all right. I have written for 
money and served God and Mammon. It is pleasanter serving 
God, but Mammon is more remunerative — ^possibly. I'm not 
yet sure. One thing I am sure of. A poem that is not written 







EDWIN MARKHAM 



HOW POEMS ARE MADE 203 

out of an enthusiasm quite above the consideration of personal 
gain, though that element may figure, can never be a great poem. 
Poets have never made money at poetry. I don't believe they 
ever will. That means — when you are writing poetr}^ try to 
write great poetry — don't try to write verse. Don't mix the 
two things. You can write verse also if you like. But don't 
make shandygaff of your poetry. There is no pleasure like the 
writing of poetry, and no despair like it." 

Mr. Benet's last bit of advice is this: "Do not be didactic in 
words if you can help it. If your poem is a great poem it will 
be powerfully didactic in effect. And that is all that is worth 
anything. If you preach outright in words the chances are that 
you will weaken the ' drive ' of your poem and circumscribe the 
scope of its influence." 

Another poet who is careful to warn young poets of the dangers 
of didacticism is Edwin Markham, the famous maker of "The 
Man With The Hoe." His warning is the more valuable because 
indiscriminating people sometimes call "The Man With The 
Hoe" didactic poetry, failing to understand that everything 
that might have been dry and didactic in such a poem was con- 
sumed in this poet's great social passion, transmuted into pure 
flame of emotion before it was expressed in virile poetry. No 
poet in America is better known or better loved than Mr. Mark- 
ham. His advice will surely be welcomed by young poets of 
to-morrow. This is what he says: 

"The poet comes to behold and to express the hidden loveli- 
ness of the world, to point out the ideal that is ever seeking to 
push through the husk of things and to reveal the inner spiritual 
reahty. So all of life is material for his seeing eye and his think- 
ing heart, as he makes the wonderful familiar and makes the 
familiar wonderful. 

'' Young poet, I command you to be critical of your own work, 
to reach a ground where you can not be easily satisfied. Make a 
serious study of the art of poetry and become acquainted at first 
hand with the best poetry of the world. Read constantly the 
great masters; dwell with loving heart upon their great lines, 



2 04 NEW VOICES 

their great passages, their great poems. These will become 
touchstones for testing the value of your own verse. There is 
nothing that takes the place of work. The kingdom of song can 
be taken only by industry, by patient resolve led on by the wings 
of inspiration. 

''Listen to a few warnings: the greatest of all poetic heresies 
is the heresy of the Didactic. We who have a serious purpose in 
our poetry, must, as far as possible, beware of the bare-bones of 
moral preachment. We must not be so intent on capturing the 
truth as to forget the beauty that is the veil of truth. Indeed, 
beauty is so essential to truth that we do not really possess 
the truth unless we have the beauty. So we are forced to keep 
seeking until we find some symbol that will express the beauty 
that is the eternal vesture of truth. This is not always an easy 
task, yet it is the stern task that is laid upon the poet by the 
austere Muse. 

"The poet must avoid the threadbare, the commonplace, and 
the scientifically exact. He seeks to rise on the wings of words 
to that high level where the kindled imagination can create 
forms of ideal loveliness and find space for unhindered flight. 
To this end the poet must avoid words like 'visualize' as being 
too precise for his purpose, too cold for his emotion. As far 
as possible he must use words that have been long lavendered 
by time and are therefore surrounded by an atmosphere of 
association and suggestiveness. 

''Be especially careful, then, to avoid all worn-out phrases and 
clauses. I have just come upon one in a recent poet's work: 
'Things are not what they seem.' Hackneyed expression is 
the death of poesy. Seek for the fresh phrase that will send 
upon the mind the surprise of unexpected beauty. 

"There are three planes in the poet's work — the ground of 
imagination, the highest of all grounds; the ground of winsome 
fancy; and the yet lower ground of freakish conceit. A flash 
of imagination gives you the sense of the ultimate truth, a 
glimpse of the universe as God sees it. An airy bubble of fancy 
gives you a pleasing ghtter; if it is not the truth, it is at least 



HOW POEMS ARE MADE 205 

an illusion that charms us. But a conceit is a forced fancy: 
we feel no livingness in it, no illusion of poetic reality. 

'' And now, young poet, I am sending you my lyric blessing 
and wishing you many happy adventures on the hills of 
Helicon." 

Another poet whose opinions many young readers will be 
glad to know is Harriet Monroe. This is what she has been 
kind enough to say: 

"As editor of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, I have had the 
pleasure — or pain — of reading in typed manuscript vast numbers 
of modern poems. This severe and educative discipline has made 
me very weary of certain faults which are, in the last analysis, 
insincerities — the use of another man's or another period's, 
words, phrases or ideas instead of the poet's own. 

'' We have almost vowed never to print in Poetry such words 
as 'surcease,' "erstwhile,' 'anon,' 'forsooth,' 'doth,' 'thou,' 
and 'thee,' and countless phrases similarly archaic; except on 
the rare occasions when subject and mood demand an archaic 
effect. Also we have grown extremely tired of Pan and other 
such talked-of gods of Greece; of Babylon and Arcadia and other 
more or less fabulous places; of Guinevere and Helen of Troy 
and Cleopatra— all the long-celebrated fascinators. It requires 
a special and peculiar magic to touch any of these enshrined idols 
without disaster, and with most modern poets the effort to do 
so is merely a pathetic appeal from the poverty of their own 
imaginations to the wealth that has been accumulated by the 
poets and artists of the past. It is essentially an insincerity, 
because it uses other people's experience and imagining instead 
of the poet's own. And a stern and stripped sincerity is a first 
essential of good art. 

" Sincerity of rhythm— a technique evolved from within, from 
the poet's own need, and not adopted ready-made, is another 
essential which the modern poet should demand of himself. 
If he is not satisfied with merely stringing iambics or anapaests, 
he may discover that each person's most intimate possession is 
the intensely personal rhythm to which he attunes the world. 



2o6 NEW VOICES 

If he doesn't find his own, he will be saved the agony of more 
slowly discovering that he is no poet. 

" I know of no rules but this for writing poems, and this pre- 
supposes a human soul overcharged with emotion, with love of 
life, and impelled to utter it in words. Be sincere — present your 
own emotional experience, not anyone else's, in your own care- 
fully chosen words and intensely felt rhythms, not anyone 
else's." 

It is easy to tell how poems should not be made. That is 
what is usually done. And there the instruction given usually 
stops. Few indeed are the poets who, like Sara Teasdale, can 
give a really helpful account of how poems actually are made, or 
are wilHng to do it if they can. But, one and all, the poets agree 
in this matter of sincerity. Padraic Colum, the young Irish 
poet now resident in this country, reiterates the same idea with 
a charming humor that is part of his Celtic inheritance, no 
doubt: 

^'The best way of making a play, according to Bernard Shaw, 
is to take over a portion of another play. This process can not 
be commended as regards the making of poetry. In the first 
place the available amount of poetry is better and more publicly 
known than the available material in plays: one would have to 
put in passages that someone would recognize and the recognition 
would cause a loss of attention!" 

Reinforcing his humorous Irish reason, Mr. Colum says that 
poems must be the result of intensity of feehng. 

"Now intensity of feeling can only come from personal, 
from novel experience. Without personal, without novel ex- 
perience, we may say that there will be no liveliness of move- 
ment in the poem. We have to be sure, then, that we have 
some intensity of feeling about the matter that is in our 
mind to be projected as a poem. It is personal, that is to say, 
it is not something that has been reported to you, but something 
that belongs to yourself: also it means more to you than any- 
thing else of the ten thousand happenings of the day. Feeling 
like this about the matter you may start to make your poem. 



HOW POEMS ARE MADE 207 

Remember, if your poem is to be a short one that the poem is in 
the first line. — 

"She walks in beauty like the night." 

Everything is said in that first fine, and what follows only holds 
up the mood that that first line has evoked. 
''The rest has all been said by Gautier. — 

'Leave to the tyro's hands 
The loose, unlabored style: 
Choose thou that which demands 
The labor of the file.' 

"Do not let your little poem run about too soon or it may be- 
come bandy-legged. Nurse it in your mind for many days and 
give it the blessing of the sun and moon and air and of the 
silence of the night." 

The same warning against insincerity is tacitly suggested in 
what Robert Frost has said about realism and idealism in litera- 
ture. The dry, homely humor of the following paragraph merits 
repetition. 

''A man who makes really good literature," says Mr. Frost, 
''is like a fellow who goes into the fields to pull carrots. He 
keeps on pulling them patiently enough until he finds a carrot 
that suggests something else to him. It is not shaped like other 
carrots. He takes out his knife and notches it here and there, 
until the two pronged roots become legs and the carrot takes on 
something of the semblance of a man. The real genius takes 
hold of that bit of life which is suggestive to him and gives it 
form. But the man who is merely a realist, and not a genius, 
will leave the carrot just as he finds it. The man who is merely 
an idealist and not a genius, will try to carve a donkey where no 
donkey is suggested by the carrot he pulls." 

Two other things a young poet should always remember as well 
as he remembers a poet's sincerity, and they are a poet's pride 
and a poet's humility. The poet's pride is a pride in his voca- 
tion, not in himself, a pride in his art, not in his own artistry. 
It is a pride that can make him of one heart and mind with 



2o8 NEW VOICES 

^'makers" of old, no matter how humble he may be. The 
primitive singer of the cavemen, the first bards and minstrels, 
the epic masters, all have passed on to him a part of their gift 
of the Word. 

This pride, furthermore, will not permit even the youngest 
and humblest of the poets to hear poetry underrated without 
protest. His protest may be humorous, but he will make it, 
gently, in a thoughtless world, whenever it may be necessary. 
Then mankind, as a whole, will come at last to perceive some- 
thing of the grandeur of poetry. The story of a poet's pride in 
poetry is most magically told in "At The King's Threshold" 
by WiUiam Butler Yeats. Mr. Yeats tells the story of Sean- 
chan, poet of ancient Ireland, who lay down to die of starvation 
on the threshhold of the king, to cast shame upon him, because 
that unwise king had denied to him, a representative of poetry, 
a place with the bishops and the lawgivers at the royal table. 
That unwise king had to learn that poetry must be respected. 
He humbled himself before Seanchan. To-day the people are 
kings. It is for poets to command their respect. 

But for himself the poet must be humble. Fame is something 
which may come to him with its advantage of association with 
the world's great folk and its disadvantages of stress and burden- 
some publicity and misunderstanding and the unkindness of 
many commentators. But fame is not what should be hungrily 
sought. The thing to be hungrily sought is beauty of expression. 
When a poet is seeking that he will be content to say, very 
humbly, with Robert Bridges, Laureate of England, 

"I have loved flowers that fade 
Within whose magic tents 
Rich hues have marriage made 
With sweet unmemoried scents: 
A honeymoon delight, — 
A joy of love at sight, 
That ages in an hour: — 
My song be like a flower!" 



PART II 
THE SPIRIT OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 

At the Author's Congress of The Panama-Pacific International 
Exposition in 19 15, Edwin Markham, who is often called "The 
Dean of American Poetry," gave an address on the subject 
of contemporary verse. Those who listened felt that, in spite 
of his venerable appearance, he was one of the youngest and 
most promising poets present. In the course of his discussion 
he told the following story. A young man once went to Mr. 
Markham and said, "Mr. Markham, I feel sure that I have it 
in me to write a great poem. I know that I can do it. But I 
have not been able to think of a subject worthy of my powers. 
Now, Mr. Markham, if you will suggest the subject, I will 
write the poem." Mr. Markham fumbled in his pocket, and, 
after a moment's deliberation, drew thence a rusty nail. "This 
is as good a subject as any," said he to the young man. And 
the young man was properly rebuked. 

For a man who, in a world of physical and spiritual miracles, 
could think of no subject "worthy of his powers," would write 
no better of the grand march of the galaxies in the milky way 
than of a little piece of metal covered with rust. After all, the 
little piece of iron has been a part of the procession of stars and 
planets. And, if our minds are so dull and unimaginative that 
we find no cause for wonder in near and familiar objects, why 
should we dare to suppose that we can fathom, describe, and in- 
terpret marvels vast and remote? Mr. Markham knew very 
well that a rusty nail in the pocket of a genius may be anything 
that the genius wishes it to be. It may be the very nail that 
held down the first plank in the floor of the house that Jack 
built. Or a leprachaun may have used it in cobbling the boot of 
a giant. But in the pocket of a dull, uninteresting man a rusty 
nail becomes a dull, uninteresting object. Now the moral of 
Mr. Markham's story is simply this: It is the poet who makes 



212 NEW VOICES 

the poem, not the theme! A poor poetaster will make poor poetry, 
or slipshod verse out of the greatest theme of all— if there be 
any greatest theme. And indeed his inadequacy will be the 
more apparent when he strains after that which his intellect 
can not reach. A great poet, on the other hand, will make great 
poems out of things that others pass by heedlessly. The beauty 
of the poem is not in the theme but in the poet's power to pre- 
sent it. 

This truth can be convincingly illustrated by reading and 
comparing good and bad poems on the same subject. Let us 
read and compare three poems on the same theme, the mature 
woman who has known the sorrows and joys of life and found her 
serene fulfillment. Probably the three men who wrote these 
poems had felt the same feeling. Probably they had the same 
ideal in mind. They differ from one another in their skill as poets. 

The first stanzas quoted are dull and prosy, directly stated 
abstractions. We are willing to believe that the worthy woman 
Roscoe Gilmore Stott describes has lived a worthy life and 
merits praise. But we do not care. We are not interested. 

THE STRONG WOMAN 

Somehow her very delicacy was strength, 
With which she met the tempest -tide of life; 

Frail craft that did not fear the journey's length 
Nor dread the billow's strife. 

Somehow her gentle tenderness was pow'r. 
With which she did the larger task alone; — 

Frail toiler fashioned for the leisure hour, 
A sturdy workman grown. 

Somehow her unfeigned purity was rule, 
With which she wrought in meek yet regal mien; — 

Frail monarch acting as her Maker's tool — 
Unknown, uncrowned, unseen! 

Hundreds of verses like this are written daily. It does no 
harm provided no one is led to suppose that they are poetry. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 213 

This particular set of verses is not even dearly thought and 
phrased. We notice that the lady changes incredibly from line 
to line. In the first stanza she is a "frail craft," in the second 
a ''frail toiler" and a "sturdy workman," in the third a "frail 
monarch" and her "Maker's tool." Imagine a tool that is 
"unknown, uncrowned, unseen." Note the silly spelling of 
"power," the redundancy of "gentle tenderness," the tiresome 
triteness of the use of the symbol chosen for life, the tempest, 
and the triteness of the rhymes. This all indicates inability. 
Mr. Stott has not made a poem. But that is not the fault of the 
theme chosen. 

Scudder Middleton has made a poem out of the same theme. 
It is written quietly and sincerely, in good English, with no ab- 
surdities and incongruities. It gives us a glimpse of a real 
personality and a sense of pleasure in the woman described. It 
is called "A Woman." 

A WOMAN 

She had an understanding with the years; 

For always in her eyes there was a light 

As though she kept a secret none might guess — 

Some confidence that Time had made her heart. 

So calmly did she bear the weight of pain. 

With such serenity accept the joy, 

It seemed she had a mother love for life. 

And all the days were children at her breast. 

But even better than this poem is Joseph Campbell's lyric, 
"The Old Woman." In it not a word embarrasses the meaning. 
Every line fits into a perfect picture which the poet has freshly 
seen and felt and presented. The S3anbolism is strong and true. 
The melody lives. 

THE OLD WOMAN 

As a white candle 

In a holy place, 
So is the beauty 

Of an aged face. 



214 NEW VOICES 

As the spent radiance 

Of the winter sun, 
So is a woman 

With her travail done, 

Her brood gone from her, 

And her thoughts as still 
As the waters 

Under a ruined mill. 

In these three poems, I think, we can all see clearly that it is 
the poet who gives value to the poem. And the natural corollary 
of this idea is the belief that there is no such thing as a ''poetic 
subject." We are sometimes told, even yet, that stars and 
flowers are poetic, that kings and gods are poetic, but that men's 
labors and creations and the plain things of the earth are not 
poetic. A few dogmatic persons still tell us that poets should 
write about the past and about the traditions of the past, that 
they should never write about the crude and unassimilated 
present. Such persons bristle with other " shoulds ' ' and ' ' should 
nots." But poets are not hkely to be greatly influenced by 
their opinions. For good poets of to-day, like good poets of 
all time, begin their work of creation wherever they touch hfe 
most closely. They build no partition between themselves and 
every day. And although this fact is sometimes responsible 
for much that is bizarre and awkward, sordid and trivial, in the 
lesser work of the minor poets, it is responsible, also, for the 
soundness and vigor, the fearless truth, keen irony, and brilliant 
beauty of our best poetry. 

In our times the poet's choice of themes has been much in- 
fluenced by the growth of the spirit of democracy in the world. 
A real poet is not a dilettante, an onlooker, but a full-fledged 
human being. He shares the spiritual life of his times. If we 
remember the Iliad, we remember that only one poor man 
was personally and individually mentioned in it, the wretch, 
Thersites, who was not favored of gods or men because he was 
neither beautiful nor good as were the heroes of Greek story. 
This, undoubtedly, was because the Homeric poets lived in a 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 215 

civilization that worshipped leaders, heroes, kings, gods. These 
great men were symbols of the achievement of the race. Poetry- 
was for them and about them. But we no longer worship the 
strength that subdues the many to the selfish purposes of the few. 
Enghsh poetry, from the beginning, has kept on growing stronger 
and stronger in the spirit of democracy. And Walt Whitman, 
our American tidal wave of democracy, swept our beaches clear 
of the refuse of old preferences. In the old days poets sang of 
the princess in the tower, the paragon of beauty, the great lady 
of the court. To-day they are not ashamed to sing of little Miss 
Stitcher, the seamstress; of Mrs. Suds, the woman who takes 
in washing; of Polly Cornfields, wife of an Iowa farmer. For 
to-day all of these women are princesses. In the common wo- 
man of to-day the modern poet sees the Madonna. The poets of 
old sang of murdering knights and picturesque highwaymen. 
To-day poets sing of Timothy Green and John Ledger and Tom 
Sugar, the ordinary men who went "over there." They have 
found knighthood in the common man. Indeed, that witty 
critic, William Crary Brownell, seems to think that the reaction 
in favor of democracy has influenced literature too strongly. 
He complains that poets who are not "adoring the golden calf" 
are "incensing the under dog." 

Now it should be understood that this broad, democratic 
interest in everybody which modern poets manifest is not a pose. 
Poets who write adequately about our workaday world are not 
well-to-do young persons who have made a few excursions into 
the slums to "see life" and are returning to share the piquant 
proletarian excitement with the upper classes. Verse-makers 
of that kind we have. They were fashionable five or ten years 
ago. But their work is negligible for it never rings true. Poets 
who write convincingly of the brave life of the great masses of 
mankind, and of the sharp pains of poverty, have learned their 
speech in the world of poverty and of the people. And although 
modem philanthropists sometimes patronize the poor, modern 
poets do not. 

In that large and vigorous poem, "The Man With The Hoe," 



2i6 NEW VOICES 

we find no condescension. Mr. Markham Is not a polite and 
gentlemanly person, standing a little apart from his kind and 
wondering why the poor are often dirty and sometimes ugly. 
He knows that the bodies of the humble sometimes reveal the 
spiritual shortcomings of the proud and the great. The whole 
poem, which is so well known that I need not quote it, is a tre- 
mendous protest against the black causes of poverty and ugliness. 
Vachel Lindsay, who travelled across the continent, "afoot 
and light hearted," trading his poems for bread and a night's 
lodging in the homes of the poor, shows an understanding of 
poverty which is just as keen and intimate in its own way. To 
him the pity of it all, the sorrow of sorrows is 

"Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly, 
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap. 
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve. 
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep." 

Louis Untermeyer is another poet who has spoken bravely 
against the oppression of the poor. If it were not for the fact 
that Mr. Untermeyer uses regularly stressed rhythms and oc- 
casional rhymes, and is a maker of fine symmetrical patterns 
in poetry, one might almost classify him with the humanitarian 
radicals. For his thought is radical enough, and humanitarian 
enough. But he is never the orator, when he writes verse, al- 
ways the poet, even in his most impassioned protests against 
what he conceives to be injustice. In one of his short poems he 
identifies himself spiritually, and for the purposes of the poem, 
with the miners about whom he is writing. In this way, by 
dramatizing his emotions and putting himself in the other man's 
place, he succeeds in giving us a subjective lyric through which 
the soul of a miner speaks: 

"God, we don't like to complain — 
We know that the mine is no lark — 

But — there's the pools from the rain; 
But — there's the cold and the dark." 

"Caliban In The Coal Mines" is memorable. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 217 

A poem which is not directly concerned with the problem of 
poverty, but which belongs most decidedly to the spirit of 
brotherhood and democracy, is Witter Bynner's beautiful long 
poem, "The New World." It is expressive of a strange pre- 
science of immortality and of a belief in the communion of 
saints. Mr. Bynner brings the light of the spirit of democracy 
to focus in the beautiful personality of one woman, CeHa. 

"Once when we broke a loaf of bread 

And shared the honey, Celia said : 

*To share all beauty as the interchanging dust, 

To be akin and kind and to entrust 

All men to one another for their good, 

Is to have heard and understood. 

And carried to the common enemy 

In you and me, 

The ultimatum of democracy.'" 

Carl Sandburg, when he is not the orator making eloquent 
protests and demanding action, sometimes makes marvellously 
good little poems out of the thought that since we must all soon 
find places in the great democracy of the dead, where rich and 
poor, tyrant and slave, become one thing, dust, it would be well 
to bring more of tlie_spirit of democratic loving-kindness into 
life. No other poet has taken just this way of pointing us toward 
democracy by writing about death. For that reason we are the 
more interested. Mr. Sandburg does it again and again. In 
'Xool Tombs" Mr. Sandburg tells us what Abraham Lincoln 
and Ulysses S. Grant forgot "in the dust, in the cool tombs." 
Then he says, "Take any streetful of people," and he asks " if 
any get more than the lovers" "in the dust ... in the cool 
tombs." Similarly, speaking of John Brown's grave, he says, 
" Room for Gettysburg, Wilderness, Chickamauga, on a six 
foot stage of dust." And again in his terse poem, "Southern 
Pacific," he tells how Huntington, the great railroad man, now 
"sleeps in a house six feet long," dreaming of ten thousand men 
saying, " Yes, sir; " and how Blithery, one of the ten thousand. 



2i8 NEW VOICES 

now sleeps "in a house six feet long," and dreams of saying 
*' Yes, sir; " to Huntington. Then he closes with these words, 

"Huntington, 

Blithery, sleep in houses six feet long." 

In "Illinois Farmer" Mr. Sandburg says, "Bury this Illinois 
farmer with respect," and he describes the farmer's long, epic 
struggle with the prairie wind. The description is brief, concise. 
Then says Mr. Sandburg, 

"The same wind will now blow over the place here where his hands 
must dream of Illinois corn." 

Again the idea is phrased with more lyrical magic in the lines 
from "Loam" which say, 

"We stand then 

To a whiff of life, 
Lifted to the silver of the sun 
Over and out of the loam 

A day." 

When nothing else will bring democracy to men the thought of 
death will bring it. 

In his dramatic poem, "The Operation/' Wilfrid Wilson Gib- 
son shows us how the poor face the thought of pain and death. 
It is about a woman who lived years with a cancer in her body 
rather than tell her husband and go to the expense of having an 
operation. Her father had died of the disease and she knew it. 
She suffered excruciating pain. But she said nothing, nothing at 
all, until her little daughter was old enough to make a home for 
her father. Then the wife went to the doctor. That is the story. 
It is told as a dialogue between husband and wife after the visit 
to the doctor. The husband says, 

"Eleven years! And never breathed a word, 
Nor murmured once, but patiently ..." 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 219 

The wife answers, 

"I come of fisherfolk, who Kve on patience. 

It's httle use for any man 

To be impatient with the sea." 

The same spirit is manifested in the work of many another 
contemporary poet. Margaret Widdemer sings of ''The Old 
Suffragist" and takes upon herself, as a representative of happy 
womanhood, a grim load of responsibility for the sins committed 
in factories. And yet she is a conservative poet in thought and 
style. James Oppenheim, a poet as radical as Margaret Widde- 
mer is conservative, takes the realities of the common life in a 
great city and makes a luminous picture of them. His "' Satur- 
day Night " was written while he was a young poet and before his 
work was well known. He no longer likes it, but other people do. 
^'Saturday Night" tells the story of the happy, nonchalant 
evening that comes only once a week to workers in great cities. 
Every stanza is beautiful. It must sufl&ce, here, to quote only 
two. 

"The lights of Saturday night beat golden, golden over the pillared 

street — 
The long plate-glass of a Dream-World olden is as the footlights 

shining sweet — 
Street-lamp — flambeau — 'glamour of trolley — comet-trail of the trains 

above, 
Splash where the jostHng crowds are jolly with echoing laughter and 

human love. 

"This is the City of the Enchanted: and these are her Enchanted 

People: 
Far and far is DayHght, haunted with whistle of mill and bell of 

steeple — 
The Eastern tenements loose the women, the Western flats release the 

wives 
To touch, where all the ways are common, a glory to their sweated 

lives." 



220 NEW VOICES 

Out of a very passionate love of the great industrial city, which, 
in spite of its sharp, tragic contrasts of riches and poverty, good 
and evil, all true moderns feel, have come many of the best 
and most beautiful of the songs of democracy. 

But of all modern poets of the people John Masefield is prob- 
ably the greatest. His story is no longer new, for journalists 
have told it often — the story of a young peer of Chaucer, in- 
dentured to a sea-captain in the days of his youth, when dreams 
were mighty, and sent out upon the great sea-paths of the world 
to use the holystone upon foul decks and to do his trick with the 
rest; the story of the man in him loving the salt taste of adven- 
ture; the story of the poet in him grown restless, demanding 
more than the ''wash and thresh" of the sea foam, and bringing 
him, twenty-five years ago, to this country of ours, where, he 
had heard, a man might become what he hked; the story of his 
quest for that which he needed and of the bizarre but not mean- 
ingless trick which Fate played in letting him become, for a 
time, an assistant to a New York bar-keeper; the story of his 
return to England and of the pubhcation of "The Everlasting 
Mercy" in 191 1, of the strong chorus of acclaim that greeted 
it and of the fame blown as far as the sea winds he had loved and 
learned to celebrate. It is an old story, this story of John Mase- 
field, but it is a great story, and will become a great tradition, 
for it is the life story of a master of the Enghsh speech, of the 
greatest living poet of the people. 

Such words as ''great" are not used with glib frequency by 
those to whom words are sacred, but, because they are light 
upon the lips of many persons who have no part in the love of 
sincere meanings, it becomes necessary, sometimes, to make the 
use of them go hand in hand with a definition. Therefore, to 
say that John Masefield is a great poet is to say that he has much, 
of Chaucer's gift of catching and sharing the flavor of persons 
and circumstances, much of the dehcate perception of beauty 
that was in Keats, much of the color of Coleridge and the plain 
earth-wisdom of Burns, much, even, of the sap and savor of 
life that was the power in Shakespeare. He has, moreover, a 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 221 

music of his own, and a sense of the significance of things, which, 
because it is modern, is more profound and searching in its own 
way than any philosophy of earher times. The world has lived 
and died many times since the days of Chaucer, and has known 
many resurrections. John Masefield has shared the life and 
death and the rising again into light. 

Since Chaucer's day the love and fear of potentates has been a 
dying cult. To-day no man seems splendid because he wears 
purple. A belief in the heroism and beauty of the common 
people has lightened perceptibly the blear darkness of the 
modern world. This growing faith in the people has been choked 
off again and again by greed and violence, but it can never be 
held by death. Always it breaks free of the dark bondage and 
comes back stronger than ever. And, even before the great war 
brought us a new sense of values, in a country that worshipped 
prosperity, many of us knew that no real hero will hew his way 
to success unless he can do it with a sword as clean as Excalibur. 

In the poetry of John Masefield all the light of this belief 
shines proudly. Over and over again, in ringing words, words 
as clean as silver, firm as bronze, and ruddy as gold, he tells his 
times the value of that which was once called valueless. He is 
the spokesman of all defeats that have been better than vic- 
tories, of all good losers who have been a gain to the race, of the 
weak and the poor and the humble whose bodies and souls have 
built stairs by which the strong might chmb. For he knows 
that under the old systems of the past only a few could achieve 
a rich reward, a shining victory. He is the bard of the scientist 
who, for forty years, will study the legs of one insect, that a later 
scientist, profiting by his painfully acquired knowledge, may 
make a great discovery. He is the bard of other failures, of the 
terrible spawn of life that we so Httle understand— the sinner 
of the kind externally and obviously and vulgarly sinful— the 
sinner from whom most of us run away, with whom Christ 
remained. Such sinners are presented to us in poems like "The 
Everlasting Mercy" with such an amazing power that we think 
no more of the printed page and forget that the story is a written 



222 NEW VOICES 

one which we have read. Having shared a master's under- 
standing and devotion, we suppose that we have been a part of 
the tale. 

Not once, but many times, does Mr. Masefield tell his story of 
pomp discredited, of valor and beauty triumphant in renuncia- 
tion and apparent defeat. Tliis is the underlying theme of his 
great book about the war, ^'GallipoH," a glorious epic in prose, 
a book to make even jaded reviewers and sophisticated critics 
weep. It is the underlying theme of his great tale, "Dauber." 
It is ever)rwhere in his narratives, like an immeasureable exten- 
sion of Browning's thought, 

"What I aspired to be 
And was not, comforts me." 

Mr. Masefield does more than tell stories that illustrate his 
great theme. He does what lesser poets could not do without 
becoming verbose and tiresome. He states the belief, formulates 
the credo of the new democracy. He sets it to work in the minds 
of his readers, like ferment. It is suggested tacitly or sounded 
clearly in nearly everything that he writes. It becomes resonant 
in that powerful lyric called "A Consecration" in which John 
Masefield takes the poor and the outcast to be his own people, 
and dedicates to them his life and his songs. It is a poem which 
can hardly be quoted too often. 

"Not of the princes and prelates with periwigged charioteers 
Riding triumphantly laurelled to lap the fat of the years, 
Rather the scorned — the rejected — ^the men hemmed in with the 
spears; 



" Theirs be the music, the color, the glory, the gold; 

Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould. 

Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold — 

Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tale be told. Amen." 

To pass on from the love of man, as we find it in poetry, to 
the love of the things that man has made and done, as they are 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 223 

celebrated in the poems of our time, is to take but a short step. 
The spirit of democracy has enabled many poets to find a new 
kind of beauty in industrial civilization. It is not the beauty 
of stars and flowers, but the beauty of streets deep-cut between 
heights of honeycombed steel and concrete, streets like canyons 
through which flow the streams of life and deeds. The great 
industrial city is a new thing upon the earth, but already poets 
have sung the songs of skyscraper and subway, of seemingly 
endless miles of lighted windows at night, of the sun twinkUng 
on thousands of flat roofs all day; they have sung the songs of 
great machines which are to our times what '' the hanging gar- 
dens of Babylon" and the pyramids were to antiquity; they have 
sung the great creations of machines, the great engineering feats 
of the day. Most notable among poems of this kind are "The 
Steam Shovel," by Eunice Tietjens, and *'The Turbine" and 
"Our Canal," by Harriet Monroe. 

In the opening lines of Mrs. Tietjens' poem is the great declara- 
tive sentence of modernity which states man's triumph over 
nature. 

"Beneath my window in a city street 

A monster lairs, a creature huge and grim 

And only half believed: the strength of him — 

Steel-strung and fit to meet 

The strength of earth — 

Is mighty as men's dreams that conquer force." 

Harriet Monroe's "The Turbine" is somewhat more elabor- 
ate and less direct, for in it she dramatizes the emotions of the 
man who manages the turbine. Great machinery always makes 
strangers in a factory grip themselves hard . It makes them tense 
with a pecuhar emotion. That tense emotion is in the poem. 

"Look— if I but lay a wire 
Across the terminals of yonder switch 
She'll burst her windings, rip her casings off, 
And shriek till envious Hell shoots up its flames, 
Shattering her very throne." 



22 4 NEW VOICES 

"Our Canal" is more idealistic in tone, perhaps because it is 
written about a work of man's doing, rather than about the 
machines with which it was done. The poem was written just 
after the completion of the Panama Canal, at a time when we 
all saw a vision of the meeting of East and West and hoped that 
the canal might become an international highway to permanent 
peace. The poem is rich in the American ideaUsm which we 
shared in the days before the great war showed us that the goals 
of peaceful service were set much farther away than we supposed 
and that we must strive longer and more sternly if we would 
reach them. The poem is valuable as a revelation of American 
spiritual life, and the following strophes, with which it ends, 
give a very good idea of the meaning of the whole. 

"'What build we from coast to coast? 
It's a path for the Holy Ghost. 
Oh, To-morrow and Yesterday 
At its gate clasp hands, touch lips; 
We shall send men forth in ships 
To find the perfect way. 

'AH that was writ shall be fulfilled at last. 
Come — till we rOund the circle, end the story. 
The west-bound sun leads forward to the past 
The thundering cruisers and the caravels. 
To-morrow you shall hear our song of glory 
Rung in the chime of India's temple bells.' 

lazy laughing Panama! 

O flutter of ribbon Hwixt the seaSi 

Pirate and king your colors wore 

And stained with blood your golden keys. 

Now what strange guest, on what mad quest, 

Lifts up your trophy to the breeze! 

O Panama, ribbon-twist 

That ties the continents together. 

Now East and West shall slip your tether 

And keep their ancient tryst! " 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 225 

If the poets who write about the industrial world were all 
romanticists ready to cast a glamour over facts, we should not 
hear of any opposition to their beUef that any subject may be a 
subject for a poem. They might write about guttering candles 
or about the Pleiades with the same certainty that they would 
have the enthusiasm of many readers and the somnolent negli- 
gence of others for their reward. But many modern poets are 
realists who cast no glamour over facts and bring into poetry 
elements of ugliness to which admirers of the Victorian poets are 
quite unaccustomed. The modern poet's reasons for giving 
ugliness a place in poetry should be explained, therefore, so 
that they need not be misunderstood. 

UgUness is very Hkely to be revealed in all modem poetry 
of a reahstic kind which describes and shares life in which ugli- 
ness is found. The ugliness is in the poetry simply because the 
poet is sincere. He will not falsify values. No good poet loves 
ughness for its own sake. But good poets do believe that ugli- 
ness, brought into poetry in its right relationships and because 
it is found in the Ufe presented, is to poetry what occasional 
discords are to music; and therefore no discussion of the spirit 
of contemporary poetry is complete without mention of the ele- 
ment of ugliness. 

To be sure, ugliness is no new thing in literature. Isaiah and 
Jeremiah were not afraid of it. They were very bold in their 
descriptive denunciations of moral evil and the symbols they 
used were strong and ugly symbols. Shakespeare permitted 
his characters the horrid delight of using very ugly language as 
occasion demanded. They availed themselves of this privilege 
with a glee and abandon almost unparalleled in the works 
of the moderns. Only a very naughty small boy can call names 
with the gusto of Shakespeare. Milton, stately poet of the 
sublime style, was not too nice and finicky to describe the horrors 
of the supposititious Hell in the life to come. Even the chil- 
dren in high schools know very well that he enjoyed creating 
the character of Satan. The poets of to-day are simply return- 
ing to these old ways of the poets, remembering the old tradi- 



226 NEW VOICES 

tions, when they describe in an ugly, but truthful way, the real 
little hells that we have near us here and now. They are show- 
ing us that the whole of life belongs to poetry. They are not 
picking out pretty bits of life for exploitation, forgetful of all the 
rest. Post- Victorian versifiers had eliminated ugliness and even 
when they wrote about sin they did not make it seem ugly. 
The poet of to-day believes that this is a mischievous way to 
write. Poets should not write covertly. They should not make 
any kind of ugliness seem smooth and pretty and romantic. 
That is why our best moderns sometimes seem lilce careful house- 
wives running around after the charwoman, Civilization, merci- 
lessly pointing out the dust that she has left hidden in cracks and 
corners. 

Now so long as the poet keeps a sense of the proportion that 
should exist between beauty and ugliness, so long as he does not 
succumb to a pathological pleasure in the portrayal of unlove- 
Hness, the clear-eyed recognition of it is good for him and for 
his readers. But a reaction against Puritan repressions and 
against Victorian smoothness and prudery has carried a few 
moderns of the radical schools too far toward ugUness, so far 
indeed that their minds are not quite healthy. Such poems as 
seem to glorify and show pleasure in dirt, disease, sin, morbidity, 
animaUty, and abnormahty are not great poetry no matter how 
cleverly they may be written. And, unfortunately, some of these 
poems are cleverly written. I have in mind a poem by a man 
capable of perceiving beauty, who has manifested the power in 
one or two poems that are reasonably good. It is called ^'K. 
McD." by V^illiam Carlos Williams. It begins in this fashion: 

"You exquisite chunk of mud, 
Kathleen — just like 
Any other chunk of mud 
— especially in April** 

Of course this is not poetry. It is the reduction of a really sub- 
lime credo of ugHness to absurdity. It is a puerile effort to 
awaken sensations of surprise. It is novelty — not originality — 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 227 

at its worst. And it is worse than all that, for it is banal and 
uninteresting. 

But such ugliness as can be found in ''The Widow In the Bye 
Street" or "The Everlasting Mercy," or is inherent in the realis- 
tic narratives of Mr. Gibson because it is inherent in the life 
described, such ugliness as makes characters real in plays like 
Mr. Bottomley's "King Lear's Wife," or serves to point an 
irony in the direction of truth as in certain poems by Rupert 
Brooke, such ugliness, in short, as insures quick recognition of 
itself and a sharp reaction, such ugliness as exists in its own true 
relations to life and for the sake of the larger beauty which in- 
cludes it, is tonic and stimulating and a vitalizing force in 
poetry. 

The poet of to-day takes from life anything which interests 
him and makes it the theme of a poem. He knows that he can 
never write well about anything which does not interest him 
keenly. Therefore, no matter how great and noble a theme may 
be, if he can not react toward it with fresh and vitalizing emo- 
tion, he will say nothing about it. For one man may write well 
about an organ grinder on the corner although he is bored by 
Phoebus Apollo. And the lights and shadows on the wall of a 
cheese factory may be more beautiful to another poet than an 
imagined sunset in Athens. The poet realizes, of course, that 
he shows his interests and enthusiasms and reveals himself 
through them whenever he writes a poem. And he knows that 
his own Ufe and personality determine his choices. But he knows 
also, that in spite of Hterary fashions, which change with chang- 
ing times, he can never write a good poem who does not feel it 
first. The theme must be the spark that kindles the warmth of 
his emotion. That is why we are sometimes tempted to believe 
that the contemporary poet, Uke Peter of old, has heard a voice 
crying from Heaven, "What God hath cleansed that call not 
thou common." For he seems to have accepted all of life, with 
its ugliness as well as its beauty, its defeat as well as its triumph. 
Having accepted Hfe, he writes with fearless sincerity. 



22 8 NEW VOICES 



A CONSECRATION 

Not of the princes and prelates with periwigged charioteers 
Riding triumphantly laurelled to lap the fat of the years, 
Rather the scorned — the rejected — the men hemmed in with the 
spears; 

The men of the tattered battalion which fights tiU it dies, 

Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries, 

The men with the broken heads and the blood running into their eyes. 

Not the be-medalled Commander, beloved of the throne, 
Riding cock-horse to parade when the bugles are blown, 
But the lads who carried the koppie and cannot be known. 

Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road, 

The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad, 

The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load. 

The sailor, the stoker of steamers, the man with the clout. 

The chantyman bent at the halliards putting a tune to the shout. 

The drowsy man at the wheel and the tired lookout. 

Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth. 

The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth; — 

Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth! 

Theirs be the music, the color, the glory, the gold; 

Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould. 

Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold — 

Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tale be told. Amen. 

John Masefield 

THE LEADEN-EYED 

Let not young souls be smothered out before 
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride. 
It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull, 
Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 229 

Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly, 
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap. 
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve, 
Not that they die, but that they die Hke sheep. 

Vachel Lindsay 



CALIBAN IN THE COAL MINES 

God, we don't Hke to complain — 

We know that the mine is no lark — 
But — there's the pools from the rain; 

But — there's the cold and the dark. 

God, You don't know what it is — 

You, in Your w^ell-lighted sky, 
Watching the meteors whizz; 

Warm, with the sun always by. 

God, if You had but the moon 

Stuck in Your cap for a lamp, 
Even You'd tire of it soon, 

Down in the dark and the damp. 

Nothing but blackness above. 

And nothing that moves but the cars — 

God, if You wish for our love. 
Fling us a handful of stars! 

Louis Untermeyer 



THE COMMON STREET 

The common street cHmbed up against the sky. 
Gray meeting gray; and wearily to and fro 
I saw the patient, common people go. 
Each with his sordid burden trudging by. 
And the rain dropped; there was not any sigh 
Or stir of a live wind; dull, dull and slow 
All motion; as a tale told long ago 
The faded world; and creeping night drew nigh. 



2 30 NEW VOICES 

Then burst the sunset, flooding far and fleet, 
Leavening the whole of Hfe with magic leaven. 
Suddenly down the long wet gHstening hill 
Pure splendor poured — and lo ! the common street, 
A golden highway into golden heaven, 
With the dark shapes of men ascending still. 

Hele7i Gray Cone 

CHERRY WAY 

Here, before the better streets begin, 

Grimy backs of buildings wall it in, 

Strident with the station's endless din, 

And a yoke 

Of dun smoke 

Makes its title a dull joke. 

Time was, once, long fled, when this slim street 

Was all color-tremulous and sweet; 

When the Sygne-Poste had a right to say 

'Xherrie Waye," 

But to-day 

It is palely bleak and gray. 

Sometimes, when the moon is riding high, 

Whitely, in a cold and cobalt sky. 

From beneath their ancient graves close by, 

Shadowed deep. 

Ladies creep 

Here to wring their hands and weep; 

Holding up the flounced and flowered skirt 

From the sordid ugUness and dirt, 

With faint sighs and gesturings of hurt. 

As to say — • 

"Lack-a-day! 

Can thys be Oure Cherrie Waye?" 

Ruth Comfort Mitchell 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 231 

BROADWAY 

How like the stars are these white, nameless faces — 

These far innumerable burning coals! 
This pale procession out of stellar spaces, 

This MUky Way of souls! 
Each in its own bright nebulae enfurled, 
Each face, dear God, a world! 

I fling my gaze out through the silent night : 

In those far stars, what gardens, what high halls, 

Has mortal yearning built for its delight, 
What chasms and what walls? 

What quiet mansions where a soul may dwell? 

What heaven and what hell? 

Hermann Hagedorn 

THE FLOWER FACTORY 

Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina, 

They are wmding stems of roses, one by one, one by one, 

Little children, who have never learned to play; 

Teresina softly crying that her fingers ache to-day; 

Tiny Fiametta nodding when the twihght slips in, gray. 

High above the clattering street, ambulance and fire-gong beat, 

They sit, curling crimson petals, one by one, one by one. 

Lisabetta, Marianma, Fiametta, Teresina, 

They have never seen a rosebush nor a dewdrop in the sun. 

They will dream of the vendetta, Teresina, Fiametta, 

Of a Black Hand and a face behind a grating; 

They will dream of cotton petals, endless, crimson, suffocating. 

Never of a wild-rose thicket nor the singing of a cricket. 

But the ambulance will bellow through the wanness of their dreams. 

And their tired lids will flutter with the street's hysteric screams. 

Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina, 

They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one. 

Let them have a long long playtime, Lord of Toil, when toil is done, 

Fill their baby hands with roses, joyous roses of the sun! 

Florence Wilkinson 



232 



NEW VOICES 



THE TIME-CLOCK 

I 
"Tick-Tock! Tick-Tock!" 
Sings the great time-clock. 
And the pale men hurry 
And flurry and scurry 
To punch their time 
Ere the hour shall chime. 
''Tick-tock! Tick-tock!" 
Sings the stern time-clock. 

"It — is — time — you — were — come ! ' 

Says the pendulum. 

"Tick-tock! Tick-tock!" 

Moans the great time-clock. 

They must leave the heaven 

Of their beds. ... It is seven, 

And the sharp whistles blow 

In the city below. 

They can never delay — 

If they're late, they must pay. 

"God help them!" I say. 

But the great time-clock 

Only says, "Tick-tock!" 

They are chained, they are slaves 

From their birth to their graves! 

And the clock 

Seems to mock 

With its awful "tick-tock!" 

There it stands at the door 

Like a brute, as they pour 

Through the dark httle way 

Where they toil night and day. 

They are goaded along 

By the terrible song 

Of whistle and gong, 

And the endless "Tick-tock!" 

Of the great time-clock. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 233 

"Tick-tock! Tick-tock!" 
Runs the voice of the clock. 



n 

Some day it will cease! 
They will all be at peace, 
And dream a new dream 
Far from shuttle and steam. 
And whistles may blow, 
And whistles may scream — 
They wUl smile — even so, 
And dream their new dream. 

But the clock will tick on 
When their bodies are gone; 
And others will hurry. 
And scurry and worry, 
While '^Tick-tock! Tick-tock!" 
Whispers the clock. 

"Tick-tock! Tick-tock! 
Tick-tock! Tick-tock!" 
Forever runs on the song of the clock! 

Charles Hanson Towne 



NIGHT'S MARDI GRAS 

Night is the true democracy. When day 

Like some great monarch with his train has passed, 
In regal pomp and splendor to the last. 

The stars troop forth along the Milky Way, 

A jostling crowd, in radiant disarray, 

On heaven's broad boulevard in pageants vast. 
And things of earth, the hunted and outcast. 

Come from their haunts and hiding-places; yea, 

Even from the nooks and crannies of the mind 
Visions uncouth and vagrant fancies start, 
And specters of dead joy, that shun the light, 



2 34 NEW VOICES 

And impotent regrets and terrors blind, 

Each one, in form grotesque, playing its part 
In the fantastic Mardi Gras of Night. 

Edward J, Wheeler 



THE FUGITIVES 

We are they that go, that go. 
Plunging before the hidden blow. 
We run the byways of the earth. 
For we are fugitive from birth, 
Blindfolded, with wide hands abroad 
That sow, that sow the sullen sod. 

We cannot wait, we cannot stop 
For flushing field or quickened crop; 
The orange bow of dusky dawn 
Glimmers our smoking swath upon; 
BHndfolded still we hurry on. 

How do we know the ways we run 
That are blindfolded from the sun? 
We stagger swiftly to the call. 
Our wide hands feeling for the wall. 

Oh, ye who cHmb to some clear heaven, 
By grace of day and leisure given. 
Pity us, fugitive and driven — 
The Hthe whip curling on our track. 
The headlong haste that looks not back! 

Florence Wilkinson 



ROSES IN THE SUBWAY* 

A wan-cheeked girl with faded eyes 

Came stumbling down the crowded car, 

Clutching her burden to her breast 
As though she held a star. 

•Copyright, 1915, by Harper & Brothers. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 235 

Roses, I swear it ! Red and sweet 

And struggling from her pinched white hands, 

Roses . . . like captured hostages 
From far and fairy lands! 

The thunder of the rushing train 

Was like a hush. . . . The flower scent 
Breathed faintly on the stale, whirled air 

Like some dim sacrament — 

I saw a garden stretching out 

And morning on it like a crown — 
And o'er a bed of crimson bloom 

My mother . . . stooping down. 

Dana Burnet 



THE MAN WITH THE HOE* 

" God created man in his own image, in the im.age of God created 
He him." 

Bowed by the weight of centuries, he leans 

Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, 

The emptiness of ages in his face 

And on his back the burden of the world. 

Who made him dead to rapture and despair, 

A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, 

StoHd and stunned, a brother to the ox? 

Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? 

Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? 

Whose breath blew out the Hght within this brain? 

Is this the thing the Lord God made and gave 

To have dominion over sea and land; 

To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; 

To feel the passion of eternity? 

Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns 

And marked their ways upon the ancient deep? 

* Millet's painting, " The Man with the Hoe " was the inspiration for this poem. 



236 NEW VOICES 

Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf 
There is no shape more terrible than this — 
More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed — • 
More filled with signs and portents for the soul — 
More packt with danger to the universe. 

What gulfs between him and the seraphim! 
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him 
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? 
What the long reaches of the peaks of song, 
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? 
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; 
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop; 
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, 
Plundered, profaned and disinherited, 
Cries protest to the Judges of the World, 
A protest that is also prophecy. 

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, 

Is this the handiwork you give to God, 

This monstrous thing, distorted and soul-quenched? 

How will you ever straighten up this shape; 

Touch it again with immortality; 

Give back the upward looking and the light; 

Rebuild in it the music and the dream; 

Make right the immemorial infamies, 

Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? 

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands. 
How will the future reckon with this man? 
How answer his brute question in that hour 
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world? 
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings — 
With those who shaped him to the thing he is — 
When this dumb terror shall appeal to God, 
After the silence of the centuries? 

Edwin Markham 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 237 
"SCUM O' THE EARTH" 



At the gate of the West I stand, 
On the isle where the nations throng. 
We call them "scum o' the earth"; 

Stay, are we doing you wrong, 

Young fellow from Socrates' land? — 

You, like a Hermes so lissome and strong 

Fresh from the master Praxiteles' hand? 

So you're of Spartan birth? 

Descended, perhaps, from one of the band — ■ 

Deathless in story and song — ■ 

Who combed their long hair at Thermopylae's pass? . . . 

Ah, I forget the straits, alas! 

More tragic than theirs, more compassion-worth, 

That have doomed you to march in our "immigrant class" 

Where you're nothing but "scum o' the earth." 

n 
You Pole with the child on your knee, 
What dower bring you to the land of the free? 
Hark! does she croon 
That sad Httle tune 

That Chopin once found on his Polish lea 
And mounted in gold for you and for me? 
Now a ragged young fiddler answers 
In wild Czech melody 
That Dvorak took whole from the dancers. 
And the heavy faces bloom 
In the wonderful Slavic way; 
The Httle, dull eyes, the brows a-gloom, 
Suddenly dawn like the day. 
While, watching these folk and their mystery, 
I forget that they're nothing worth; 
That Bohemians, Slovaks, Croatians, 
And men of all Slavic nations 
Are "polacks" — and "scum o' the earth." 



238 NEW VOICES 

in 
Genoese boy of the level brow, 
Lad of the lustrous, dreamy eyes 
Astare at Manhattan's pinnacles now 
In the first, sweet shock of a hushed surprise; 
Within your far-rapt seer's eyes 
I catch the glow of a wild surmise 
That played on the Santa Maria's prow 
In that still gray dawn, 
Four centuries gone, 

When a world from the wave began to rise. 
Oh, it's hard to foretell what high emprise 
Is the goal that gleams 
When Italy's dreams 
Spread wing and sweep into the skies. 
Caesar dreamed him a world ruled well; 
Dante dreamed Heaven out of Hell; 
Angelo brought us there to dwell; 
And you, are you of a different birth? — 
You're only a "dago," — and "scum o' the earth"! 



IV 

Stay, are we doing you wrong 

Calling you "scum o' the earth," 

Man of the sorrow-bowed head, 

Of the features tender yet strong, — 

Man of the eyes full of wisdom and mystery 

Mingled with patience and dread? 

Have not I known you in history, 

Sorrow-bowed head? 

Were you the poet-king, worth 

Treasures of Ophir unpriced? 

Were you the prophet, perchance, whose art 

Foretold how the rabble would mock 

That shepherd of spirits, erelong, 

Who should carry the lambs on his heart 

And tenderly feed his flock? 

Man — lift that sorrow-bowed head. 

Lo! 'tis the face of the Christ! 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 239 

The vision dies at its birth. 
You're merely a butt for our mirth. 
You're a "sheeny" — and therefore despised 
And rejected as "scum o' the earth." 



Countrymen, bend and invoke 

Mercy for us blasphemers, 

For that we spat on these marvelous folk, 

Nations of darers and dreamers, 

Scions of singers and seers, 

Our peers, and more than our peers. 

"Rabble and refuse," we name them 

And "scum o' the earth" to shame them. 

Mercy for us of the few, young years, 

Of the culture so callow and crude, 

Of the hands so grasping and rude, 

The lips so ready for sneers 

At the sons of our ancient more-than-peers. 

Mercy for us who dare despise 

Men in whose loins our Homer lies; 

Mothers of men who shall bring to us 

The glory of Titian, the grandeur of Huss; 

Children in whose frail arms shall rest 

Prophets and singers and saints of the West. 

Newcomers all from the eastern seas, 
Help us incarnate dreams like these. 
Forget, and forgive, that we did you wrong. 
Help us to father a nation, strong 
In the comradeship of an equal birth. 
In the wealth of the richest bloods of earth. 

Robert Haven Schaujjler 

FROM "THE NEW WORLD " 

Celia was laughing. Hopefully I said: 
"How shall this beauty that we share. 
This love, remain aware 
Beyond our happy breathing of the air? 



2 40 NEW VOICES 

How shall it be fulfilled and perfected? . . . 

If you were dead, 

How then should I be comforted?" 

But Celia knew instead: 
"He who finds beauty here, shall find it there." 

A halo gathered round her hair. 
I looked and saw her wisdom bare 
The living bosom of the countless dead. 
. . . And there 
I laid my head. 

Again when Celia laughed, I doubted her and said: 
"Life must be led 
In many ways more difficult to see 
Than this immediate way 
For you and me. 

We stand together on our lake's edge, and the mystery 
Of love has made us one, as day is made of night and night of 

day. 
Aware of one identity 
Within each other, we can say: 
'I shall be everything you are.' . . . 
We are uplifted till we touch a star. 
We know that overhead 

Is nothing more austere, more starry, or more deep to understand 
Than is our union, human hand in hand. 
. . . But over our lake come strangers — a crowded launch, a lonely 

sailing boy. 
A mile away a train bends by. In every car 
Strangers are travelling, each with particular 
And unkind preference like ours, with privacy 
Of understanding, with especial joy 
Like ours, Celia, Celia, why should there be 
Distrust between ourselves and them, disunity? 
. . . How careful we have been 
To trim this little circle that we tread. 
To set a bar 

To strangers and forbid them ! — Are they not as we, 
Our very likeness and our nearest kin? 
How can we shut them out and let stars in?" 



DEMOCRACY AND THE NEW THEMES 



241 



She looked along the lake. And when I heard her speak, 
The sun fell on the boy's white sail and her white cheek. 
"I touch them all through you," she said. "I cannot know them noy 
Deeply and truly as my very own, except through you, 
Except through one or two 
Interpreters. 
But not a moment stirs 

Here between us, binding and interweaving us, 
That does not bind these others to our care." 

The sunlight fell in glory on her hair. . . . 
And then said CeHa, radiant, when I held her near: 
"They who find beauty there, shall find it here." 

And on her brow, 
When I heard CeHa speak, 
Cities were populous 

With peace and oceans echoed glories in her ear 
And from her risen thought 
Her Hps had brought, 
As from some peak 

Down through the clouds, a mountain-air 
To guide the lonely and uplift the weak. 

''Record it all," she told me, "more than merely this, 
More than the shine of sunset on our heads, more than a kiss. 
More than our rapt agreement and delight 
Watching the mountain mingle with the night. . . . 
Tell that the love of two incurs 
The love of multitudes, makes way 
And welcome for them, as a solitary star 
Brings on the great array. 
Go make a lovers' calendar," 
She said, "for every day." 

And when the sun had put away 
His dazzle, over the shadowy firs 
The solitary star came out. ... So on some night 
To eyes of youth shall come my light 
And hers. 

Witter Bynner 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 

Courage is the fundamental biological virtue, the necessary 
virtue without which the human race could never have survived 
on this planet. Long before people discussed the virtues and 
classified their names as abstract nouns, courage was a concrete 
and definite thing. If he would eat, the man of the stone age 
must have courage in hunting and fishing and fighting. If 
she would protect her young, the woman of the stone age must 
have courage to stand before them in the door of her cave. 
Therefore courage is probably planted deeper in us than any of 
the virtues acquired later in the history of the race and is prob- 
ably the most common of all virtues. Certainly, whenever it is 
demanded of them, men and women with no very unusual quaU- 
ties of any other kind manifest courage in a remarkable degree. 
And in almost all normal human beings, as the great war has 
proved, is a capacity for courage, even for heroism. In spite of 
the fact that many of us never rise very high above our sins and 
follies, it can be said justly that few of us are cowards. 

Much of the power of the social and racial passion called 
patriotism is to be found in the fact that it calls upon the com- 
mon woman and man to exercise this ancient virtue. It affords 
an opportunity for transfiguration. No matter what his faults 
may have been, when the time comes a man will be a man — and, 
in the same sense, a woman will be a woman. For once they will 
be godlike, giving everything, facing and enduring all things for 
the sake of the dear soil of the mother land, for the streets of 
the home town, and for the civilization in which they have been 
bred, which, in spite of all the criticisms leveled against it in 
times of peace, probably suits them better than any other which 
might be imposed upon them. 

For it is the glory of poor errant human nature to love the 

242 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 243 

exercise of courage, or of any virtue. Nothing gives a man more 
happiness than the expression of that which is best in himself. 
Nothing, to speak colloquially, is more fun than being good. Let 
a man once get a good strong taste of any particular virtue and 
know what it is like to practise it and the chances are that he 
will enjoy it so much that Satan will have little power over him 
with the opposite vice. That man will have to be tempted in 
another way. When a rich man gives away large parts of his 
fortune in philanthropies of one kind or another, he is enjoying 
the virtue of generosity. When a man who could earn an ex- 
cellent living in business continues to preach and teach at a low 
wage, he is enjoying his self-abnegation. The virtue which we 
have tried, the virtue in which we believe, that alone will con- 
tent us. And it is only the person who has never made a fair 
trial of "being good" in one way or another, who does not like 
it. To be sure it is not always easy to be good in a world where 
goodness does not altogether control the popular imagination 
and where it is not always understood. But that fact makes it 
the more interesting. 

Now courage is the virtue that most men and women know 
best. And patriotism is the greatest of social and racial passions. 
Therefore when patriotism calls men and women to the exercise 
of the ancient biological virtue, not in the dull, slow ways of 
peace, but in the quick and dramatic ways of war that stir the 
imagination and arouse the emotions, then the people respond. 
Out of that response came the first war songs. Out of it will come 
the last. 

Nearly all living poets have written something about the great 
war. If we could have all of the thousands of poems written by 
recognized poets, with their dates, we should have a passionate 
record of all that mankind has felt about the war and of the 
several currents of changing emotion that have swept across the 
world since 19 14. But the whole story of the poetry of the war 
can never be told in any one book. The best that can be done 
here is to tell what a few poets of our language have felt and 



244 NEW VOICES 

how they have spoken, for themselves, for their people, for their 
times. 

In 19 14 many sober-minded persons here and abroad thought 
that there would never be another great war. In the United 
States, especially, we had begun to feel very secure in the thought 
of the world's peace. We are a nation made of people from many 
nations, "of many one." We were getting ready for world 
federation and internationalism. And then the greatest of all 
international wars began. For a while we stood aloof. We 
were annoyed with Europe. We were disgusted with Germany's 
behavior to Belgium, to be sure. We wanted to help the poor 
Belgians. We were wiUing to give generously. But for our- 
selves we did not believe in bloodshed unless it was necessary 
in self-defense. We thought things could and should be settled 
by arbitration. We did not want to take part in Europe's 
ugly family quarrel. In spite of our theoretical internationalism 
we did not feel that we were a part of the same world which the 
Europeans were disturbing. As in the days of Washington, we 
thought we were the "New World" and they were the "Old 
World." We did not understand that from now on there can 
be but one great family in the world, the human family, and that 
any vital quarrel will involve all members of that family sooner 
or later. 

Therefore the first American poems about the great war were 
poems of peace. They were not very good. Perhaps, in so far as 
they touched the war, the American poems of that period may be 
called negligible. Most of them pointed out the wickedness of 
Europe or the wickedness of war. Most of them took issue in 
the minds of their makers from moral ideas, not from emotional 
realizations. Some of them expressed a generous S3mipathy 
with the sufferings of Europe. As poetry none of them were 
great. 

But in England, at that same time, war was necessary. It 
was not a subject for academic discussion. It was a reality. 
And the first EngUsh poems were songs inciting men to valor, 
lyrics which called to the minds of Englishmen the heroism of 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 245 

England's valiant dead. They made the old racial appeal to 
the common virtue of courage. 

In England these first poems about the war seem to have been 
written by mature and famous poets, perhaps because the young 
poets were among those first called to the front. In a small 
volume called ''Songs And Sonnets For England In War Time" 
(Lane) and published in 19 14, we find no poems by the young 
fighting singers who have since brought beauty out of the Hell 
in which they lived. In this little book were poems by Thomas 
Hardy, G. K. Chesterton, Henry Newbolt and others as well 
known. But their contributions to this volume can hardly be 
set side by side with their best work in poetry. Very little in 
the book is more than manly journalism. The best poems in it 
are Laurence Binyon's generous lyric, "To Women," and Rud- 
yard Kipling's "For All We Have And Are," a poem strong in 
the racial spirit. 

"For aU we have and are, 
For all our children's fate, 
Stand up and meet the war. 
The Hun is at the gate! 

****** 

" There is but one task for all — 
For each one life to give. 
Who stands if freedom fall? 
Who dies if England live?" 

For the rest, none of the poets represented had, at that time, 
written a great poem about the war. It was not for any lack of 
genius. It was simply that it was too soon. The spiritual reali- 
ties of the war were too stupendous to be quickly revealed. The 
issues of it could not be realized quickly. Never before in our 
times had men and women been called upon to witness such a 
pageant of the human spirit. Old wars gave no clue to the magni- 
tude of this one. Poets needed to wait and learn, before they 
could speak. 

The English learned sooner than we, for they stepped first 



246 NEW VOICES 

out of safety and peace into the valor and agony of the mael- 
strom. Then, when the first convulsion of pain shook the heart 
of a great people, their speech was heard, as English speech 
has always been heard, in the voices of poets worthy of England. 
John Masefield gave the world ''August, 1914," and Rupert 
Brooke, the "Nineteen Fourteen" sonnets. 

"August, 19 14" is quiet and profound. It begins with the 
line, 

" How still this quiet cornfield is to-night! " 

In every sweet-flowing line a depth of quietness is felt. Yet the 
poem is as moving as the beat of drums. In it is the essence of 
what one feels about one's own country and folk. Mr. Mase- 
field thought and wrote of the Englishmen of all ages who had 
heard the news of war, who went home to think about it quietly 
at their own hearths, 

"With such dumb loving of the Berkshire loam 
As breaks the dumb hearts of the English kind, 

" Then sadly rose and left the well-loved Downs, 
And so by ship to sea, and knew no more 
The fields of home, the byres, the market towns, 
Nor the dear outline of the English shore, 

" But knew the misery of the soaking trench. 
The freezing in the rigging, the despair 
In the revolting second of the wrench 
When the blind soul is flung upon the air, 

" And died (uncouthly, most) in foreign lands 

For some idea but dimly understood 

Of an English city never built by hands 

Which love of England prompted and made good." 

Three of the "Nineteen-Fourteen" sonnets of Rupert Brooke, 
"Peace," "The Dead" (one of two with that title), and "The 
Soldier" were pubHshed first in Chicago, in Poetry, A Magazine 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 247 

of Verse. These and the others in the same group are noble 
alike in conception and execution. They are thrilling in their 
exaltation. 

"Now, God be thanked who has matched us with this hour, 
And caught our youth and wakened us from sleeping!" 

That was Rupert Brooke's answer, that was the answer of 
youth called to be a sacrifice for the sins of the world. The 
fine, white fire of this mood lights every line of these sonnets. 
Surely man is never greater than when he can give thanks for 
his own renunciations. 

Rupert Brooke showed his love of life in his earher poems. His 
occasional ironies, gritty and delightfully humorous, were the 
ironies of youth and without bitterness. They have done nothing 
to destroy our belief that he found joy in the things of the world. 
This makes the sonnets seem the more lovely since now, for 
Rupert Brooke, as for "The Dead " of whom he wrote, 

"Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance 
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white 

Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, 

A width, a shining peace, under the night." 

Rupert Brooke's sonnets are purely lyrical, the direct ex- 
pression of great personal emotion. His friend, Wilfrid Wilson 
Gibson, who gave us the first good reaUstic poetry of the war, 
has dramatized the emotions of the common soldier, any 
soldier at the front. He tells us things that we all know very 
well might be in the heart of any decent, normal man not a 
soldier by trade and inclination, but for love of honor and home. 
The wonder about dying, the horror of killing, the great helpless 
sympathy for other suffering men, all the poignant pathos of 
warfare are to be found in these plain, homely little poems. They 
are like strong, true sketches in charcoal, done in a few lines, 
but unforgettable. And in the making of them Mr. Gibson 
is so much an artist that he has used always the exact, the vivid 
word. In "The Bayonet" he says: 



2 48 NEW VOICES 

"This bloody steel 
Has killed a man, 
I heard him squeal 
As on I ran." 

Only strong personal realization could have written that word 
''squeal." It brings home to us the horror of killing as no other 
word could. 

Much of the beauty of these poems is in the absolute faith- 
fulness to reality which seems to be Mr. Gibson's ideal. We 
read about the lad who lies in the trench thinking of home as he 
left it, and saying to himself, 

" I wonder if the old cow died or not." 

We read about another lad "back from the trenches more dead 
than alive," who is suffering mental torment because three of his 
chums dropped dead beside him in the trench and whispered 
their dying messages to him, and yet he "can not quite re- 
member." We read about the feverish man in the ambulance 
who keeps other chaps awake all night muttering about his 
garden 

"Two rows of cabbages, 
Two of curly-greens, 
Two rows of early peas. 
Two of kidney beans." 

Another realist, Siegfried Sassoon, writes of the war in much 
the same spirit, save that the edge of his irony is sharper and he 
is more bitter about the war and the destruction it has wrought. 
Mr. Sassoon knows war by actual experience. He can not write 
of it as the older poets wrote before the battle was on. Nor dp 
any of the young poets who have fought write as men wrote of 
war in days gone by. In a very terrible short poem called "The 
Kiss," Mr. Sassoon expresses something which seems to be in the 
hearts of all of these young poets who have come to grips with 
war and suffered and fought most bravely. In this poem, with 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 249 

sensitive spirit, he prays for an insensate fury which will enable 
him to do his hideous duty. He says, 

"To these I turn, in these I trust; 
Brother Lead and Sister Steel." 

and then he makes his prayer: 

"Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this; 
That in good fury he may feel 
The body where he sets his heel 
Quail from your downward darting kiss." 

Terrible as such poems are, there is something essentially noble 
in the intellectual honesty that will cast no glamour over the 
thing which must be done, not because it is beautiful, but be- 
cause, in an imperfect world, it is necessary. This same un- 
compromising bitterness is to be found in many another strong 
lyric, in "Golgotha," "When I'm Among A Blaze of Lights," 
"A Mystic As a Soldier," "Blighters" and "At Carnoy." Mr. 
Sassoon is a sincere and truth-loving poet of whom fine things 
may be expected. 

His two friends, Robert Graves and Robert Nichols, are less 
bitter in their thought of the war. Robert Graves, if one can 
judge him by his book, "Fairies And Fusiliers," is not bitter at 
all, but a gay young singer, capable of impish mischief and in- 
souciant fancy. His poems of the war are well made, true and 
beautiful with a boy's spirit of gallantry. In particular "The 
Assault Heroic" is a fine poem which tells how a young officer, 
worn out after five sleepless days and nights in the trenches, 
in that peculiar trance between sleep and wakefulness which 
sometunes comes to the very weary, must fight his own spiritual 
enemies within himself. Wlien he has won his victory, 

"with my spear of Faith, 
Stout as an oaken rafter, 
With my round shield of laughter" 



2 50 



NEW VOICES 



he hears once more the very real voices of his men in the trench, 

saying, 

''Stand to! Stand to! 
Wake up, sir! Here's a new 
Attack! Stand to! Stand to!" 

Robert Nichols, the third member of this trio of young Eng- 
Ksh poets, is rather better known in the United States than 
either of the others, because he has visited us. His poems are 
less bitter in their descriptions of war than Siegfried Sassoon's. 
He is content to show that it is tragic. Nor is he so young and 
whimsical in manner as Robert Graves. His poems are some- 
what more lyrical than the poems of either of the others. But 
in his book, ''Ardours And Endurances" we find a number of 
poems chiefly remarkable for the truth and vitality of their 
picturing. One of the finest of these picture-poems is "Out of 
Trenches: The Barn, Twilight." Just to read it is to join a 
group of Tommies and listen to their songs and their talk. It is 
admirably done. But it is not verse to be quoted. It should 
be read as a whole. 

Another fine, true picture from the front is Ford Madox 
Hueffer's "The Old Houses of Flanders," a poem made with 
delicate skill and fine imagination, as are also his more lyrical 
poems, "The Iron Music" and "A SoHs Ortus Cardine." It 
is interesting to note that no American has written war poetry 
of this pictorial kind. 

The first fine American poem of the war vv^ritten by an Ameri- 
can who was a sharer in the conflict is Alan Seeger's "I Have 
A Rendezvous With Death," now famous wherever poetry is 
read in our language. Alan Seeger, as everybody knows, went 
into the war with impetuous and generous gallantry, before this 
nation went into it, and for love of France, the foster-mother of 
his spirit. He died at Belloy-en-Santerre without knowing that 
we also, later, would follow where he led, to France and to 
battle. 

"I Have A Rendezvous With Death" is a gravely beautiful 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 251 

lyric, personal, intimate, a young man's word about himself 
and his last adventure. All the austerity of youth consecrated 
to dissolution is in these reiterated lines about the rendezvous. 
All the lavish generosity of youth, going out to death while the 
love of life is still hot in the heart, is in the last lines of this 
stern singing, 

"But I've a rendezvous with Death 
At midnight in some flaming town, 
When Spring trips North again this year, 
And I to my pledged word am true, 
I shall not fail that rendezvous." 

After our declaration of war a number of fine poems were 
written. First came the call to courage. And just as in Eng- 
land, in 1914, so in our country, in 1917, poems were written 
that were simply attempts to summon men to the exercise of 
the ancient and indisputable virtue of the race. These poems 
were just what many of the first English poems of the war 
were, manly journaHsm. But one of them was much more. 
Edgar Lee Masters' "Draw The Sword, O Republic," is a fine, 
stern call to battle, and will continue to be a fine, stern summons 
when many other poems of to-day are forgotten. It is one of the 
finest things he ever wrote. It is not lyrical, for the singer's 
gift is not in Mr. Masters ' genius. But it is powerful, resonant 
speech, and, since the modern conception of poetry has been 
enlarged to include such speech, it is indubitably poetry. More- 
over it is essentially American, for, says Mr. Masters: 

"By the power that drives the soul to Freedom, 
And by the power that makes us love our fellows, 
And by the power that comforts us in death, — 
Dying for great races to come — 
Draw the sword, O Republic! 
Draw the sword!" 

It is in America that men live and die not for one race, but 
for "great races to come." 



2 52 * NEW VOICES 

Another fine American poem of the war is Amy Lowell's 
narrative, ''A Cornucopia of Red And Green Comfits." It is 
one of her greatest achievements, for in it her magical imagina- 
tion presents a series of sharply drawn pictures that tell a teri- 
rible tale of perfidy. This is a story, founded on fact, of the 
children of Bar-le-Duc, in the province of Meuse, in France, 
Bar-le-Duc, whose people have won fame the world over for 
their conserve of currants and honey. These little children were 
betrayed to their death by their natural love of sugar. German 
aviators scattered poisoned candy on the ground for them. In 
no other poem does Miss Lowell gain so complete a control of 
the emotions of her readers. In all of her poems she shows her 
fecundity of imagination and the nice skill of the craftsman. 
But this is a poem by an indignant woman, speaking of an out- 
rage against childhood. 

But perhaps Americans will treasure Joyce Kilmer's "Rouge 
Bouquet" as long, and with as much affection as they can have 
for any American poem of the great war. For Mr. Kilmer en- 
listed almost as soon as we went into the war and died for his 
country, in France, near the Ourcq, July 30, 1918. 

'^ Rouge Bouquet" commemorates the death of our boys in 
khaki buried under earth ten meters thick when a great shell 
exploded near a dugout in the wood called "Rouge Bouquet.'* 
Like most of Mr. Kilmer's more serious poems, "Rouge 
Bouquet" is written in the spirit of the Catholic faith, and 
pictures the welcome that the saints will offer the brave lads 
when they go in at the gate of Heaven: 

"St. Michael's sword darts through the air 
And touches the aureole on his hair 
As he sees them stand saluting there, 

His stalwart sons; 
And Patrick, B rigid, Columkill 
Rejoice that in veins of warriors still 

The Gael's blood runs." 

Then the poem closes with the farewell of the friends on earth 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 253 

and the bugles playing "Taps." To the spirits of these fellow 
soldiers Joyce Kilmer said, 

"Your souls shall be where heroes are 

And your memory shine like the morning-star. 

Brave and dear, 

Shield us here. 

Farewell!" 

That is the farewell that the world now echoes for him. 

I— THE DEAD* 

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! 

There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, 

But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. 
These laid the world away; poured out the red 
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be 

Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene 

That men call age; and those who would have been 
Their sons, they gave, their immortality. 
Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth. 

Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain. 
Honor has come back, as a king, to earth, 

And paid his subjects with a royal wage; 
And Nobleness walks in our ways again; 

And we have come into our heritage. 

II— THE DEAD 

These hearts were woven of human joj^s and cares, 

Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth. 
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, 

And sunset, and the colors of the earth. 
These had seen movement, and heard music; known 

Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; 
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone; 

Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended. 

• From The Collected Poems oj Rupert Brooke. Copyright, 1Q15, by John Lane Company. 



2 54 NEW VOICES 

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter 
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after, 

Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance 
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white 

Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, 
A width, a shining peace, under the night. 

Rupert Brooke 

DAWN 

The grim dawn lightens thin bleak clouds; 
In the hill clefts beyond the flooded meadows 
Lies death-pale, death-still mist. 

We trudge along wearily, 
Heavy with lack of sleep, 
Spiritless, yet with pretence of gaiety. 

The sun brings crimson to the colourless sky; 
Light gleams from brass and steel — 
We trudge on wearily — 

O God, end this bleak anguish 
Soon, soon, with vivid crimson death, 
End it in mist-pale sleep! 

Richard Aldington 

THE MESSAGES 

"I cannot quite remember. . . . There were five 
Dropt dead beside me in the trench — and three 
Whispered their dying messages to me. ..." 

Back from the trenches, more dead than alive, 
Stone-deaf and dazed, and with a broken knee, 
He hobbled slowly, muttering vacantly: 

"I cannot quite remember. . . . There were five 
Dropt dead beside me in the trench, and three 
Whispered their dying messages to me . . . 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 255 

"Their friends are waiting, wondering how they thrive — 

Waiting a word in silence patiently. ... 

But what they said, or who their friends may be 

"I cannot quite remember. . . . There were five 
Dropt dead beside me in the trench, — and three 
Whispered their dying messages to me. . . . " 

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 



THE FATHER 

That was his sort. 

It didn't matter 

What we were at 

But he must chatter ^^ 

Of this and that X 

His Uttle son 

Had said and done: 

TiU, ashetold ^ .- «* 

The fiftieth time 

Without a change 

How three-year-old 

Prattled a rhyme. 

They got the range 

And cut him short. 

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 



BREAKFAST 



\ 



We ate our breakfast Ivkig on our* backs. 

Because the shells were screeching ^bverhead. 

I bet a rasher to a loaf of bread 

That Hull United would beat Halifax 

When Jimmy Stainthorpe played full-back instead 

Of Billy Bradford. Ginger raised his head 

And cursed, and took the bet; and dropt back dead. 

We ate our breakfast lying on our backs. 

Because the shells were screeching overhead. 

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 



256 NEW VOICES 



THE KISS 

To these I turn, in these I trust; 
Brother Lead and Sister Steel. 
To his blind power I make appeal; 
I guard her beauty clean from rust. 

He spins and burns and loves the air, 
And splits a skull to win my praise; 
But up the nobly marching days 
She glitters naked, cold and fair. 

Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this; 
That in good fury he may feel 
The body where he sets his heel 
Quail from your downward darting kiss. 

Siegfried Sassoon 

ABSOLUTION* 

The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes 
Till beauty shines in all that we can see. 
War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise, 
And, fighting for our freedom, we are free. 

Horror of wounds and anger at the foe. 

And loss of things desired; all these must pass. 

We are the happy legion, for we know 

Time's but a golden wind that shakes the grass. 

There was an hour when we were loth to part 
From life we longed to share no less than others. 
Now, having claimed this heritage of heart. 
What need we more, my comrades and my brothers? 

Siegfried Sassoon 

From The Old Huntsman and Other Poems by Siegfried Sassoon, London. Heinemann. 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 257 



THE ASSAULT HEROIC* 

Down in the mud I lay, 

Tired out by my long day 

Of five damned days and nights, 

Five sleepless days and nights, . . . 

Dream-snatched, and set me where 

The dungeon of Despair 

Looms over Desolate Sea, 

Frowning and threatening me 

With aspect high and steep — 

A most malignant keep. 

My foes that lay within 

Shouted and made a din, 

Hooted and grinned and cried: 

** To-day we've killed your pride; 

To-day your ardour ends. 

We've murdered all your friends; 

We've undermined by stealth 

Your happiness and your health. 

We've taken away your hope; 

Now you may droop and mope 

To misery and to Death." 

But with my spear of Faith, 

Stout as an oaken rafter, ^ 

With my round shield of laughter', 

With my sharp toiigue-like sword 

That speaks a bitter word, 

I stood beneath the wall 

And there defied them all. 

The stones they cast I caught 

And alchemized with thought ^ y * ; . ^ 

Into such lumps of gold , • 

As dreaming.-sn-is^s hold. 

Tne' boiling oil they threw 

Fell in a shower of dew, 

Refreshing me; the spears 

Flew harmless by my ears, 

• From Fairies and Fusiliers by Robert Graves, London. Heinemann. 



258 NEW VOICES 

Stuck quivering in the sod; 
There, Hke the prophet's rod, 
Put leaves out, took firm root, 
And bore me instant fruit. 
My foes were all astounded, 
Dumbstricken and confounded, 
Gaping in a long row; 
They dared not thrust nor throw. 
Thus, then, I climbed a steep 
Buttress and won the keep. 
And laughed and proudly blew 
My horn, '^ Stand to! Stand to! 
Wake up, sir! Here^s a new 
Attack! Stand to! Stand to! ^^ 



Robert Graves 



OUT OF TRENCHES: THE BARN, TWILIGHT 

In the raftered barn we lie, 

Sprawl, scrawl postcards, laugh and speak — 

Just mere men a trifle weary. 

Worn in heart, a trifle weak: 

Because alway 

At close of day 

Thought steals to England far away. . . . 

"Alf!" "Oay." 

"Gi' us a tune, mate." "Well, wot say?" 

"Swipe 'The Policeman's 'Oliday' ..." 

" Tiddle — iddlc — um — turn, 

Turn — TuM." 

Sprawling on my aching back. 
Think I nought; but I am glad — 
Dear, rare lads of pick and pack! 
Aie me too! I'm sad . . . I'm sad: 
Some must die 
(Maybe I) : 

O pray it take them suddenly! 
"Bill!" "Wot ho!" 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 259 

"Concertina: let it go — 

' If you were the only girl '" " Cheero ! 

"// you were the Only GirlJ'' 

Damn. " Abide with Me. . ." Not now! — 

Well ... if you must: just your way. 

It racks me till the tears nigh flow. 

The tune see-saws. I turn, I pray 

Behind my hand 

Shaken, unmanned, 

In groans that God may understand: 

Miracle! 

"Let, let them all survive this hell" 

Hear " Trumpeter, what are you sounding? " swell. 

(My God! I guess indeed too well: 

The broken heart, eyes front, proud knell!) 

Grant but mine sound with their farewell. 

^^Ws the Last Post Fm sounding.'^ 

Robert Nichols 

NEARER 

Nearer and ever nearer . . . 
My body, tired but tense, 
Hovers 'twixt vague pleasure 
And tremulous confidence. 

Arms to have and to use them 
And a soul to be made 
Worthy if not worthy; 
If afraid, unafraid. 

To endure for a Httle, 
To endure and have done: 
Men I love about me, 
Over me the sun! 

And should at last suddenly 
Fly the speeding death, 
The four great quarters of heaven 
Receive this little breath. 

Robert Nichols 



26o NEW VOICES 



THE IRON MUSIC 



The French guns roll continuously 
And our guns, heavy, slow; 
Along the Ancre, sinuously, 
The transport wagons go, 
And the dust is on the thistles 
And the larks sing up on high . . . 
Bui I see the Golden Valley 
Down by Tintern on the Wye. 

For it's just nine weeks last Sunday 

Since we took the Chepstow train, 

And I'm wondering if one day 

We shall do the like again; 

For the four-point-two's come screaming 

Thro' the sausages on high; 

So thcre^s little use in dreaming 

How we walked above the Wye. 

Dust and corpses in the thistles 
Where the gas-shells burst like snow. 
And the shrapnel screams and whistles 
On the Becourt road below, 
And the High Wood bursts and bristles 
Where the mine-clouds foul the sky . . . 
But Fm with you up at Wyndcroft, 
Over Tintern on the Wye. 

Ford Madox Huefer 



THE OLD HOUSES OF FLANDERS* 

The old houses of Flanders, 

They watch by the high cathedrals; 

They overtop the high town-halls; 

They have eyes, mournful, tolerant and sardonic, for the ways of men 

In the high, white tiled gables. 

♦From On Heaven and Poems Written on Active Service by Ford Madox HueflFer, by 
permission of John Lane Company, New York, and John Lane, The Bodley Head, London, 
publishers. 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 261 

The rain and the night have settled down on Flanders; 
It is all wet darkness; you can see nothing. 

Then those old eyes, mournful, tolerant and sardonic, 
Look at great, sudden, red lights. 
Look upon the shades of the cathedrals; 
And the golden rods of the illuminated rain, 
For a second . . . 

And those old eyes, 

Very old eyes that have watched the ways of men for many genera- 
tions, 
Close for ever. 

The high, white shoulders of the gables 
Slouch together for a consultation, 
Slant drunkenly over in the lea of the flaming cathedrals. 

They are no more, the old houses of Flanders. 

Ford Madox Huefer 

"I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH"* 

I have a rendezvous with Death f/^ 

At some disputed barricade. 

When Spring comes back with rustling shade 

And apple-blossoms fill the air — 

I have a rendezvous with Death 

WTien Spring brings back blue days and fair. 

It may be he shall take my hand 
And lead me into his dark land 
And close my eyes and quench my breath- 
It may be I shall pass him still. 
I have a rendezvous with Death 
On some scarred slope of battered hill, 
When Spring comes round again this year 
And the first meadow-flowers appear. 

God knows 't'were better to be deep 
Pillowed in silk and scented down, 

* Copyright, 1916, by Charles Scribaer's Sons. 



262 NEW VOICES 

Where love throbs out in bHssful sleep, 
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, 
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . . 
But I've a rendezvous with Death 
At midnight in some flaming town, 
When Spring trips north again this year, 
And I to my pledged word am, true, 
I shall not fail that rendezvous. 

Alan Seeger 

DRAW THE SWORD, O REPUBLIC 

By the blue sky of a clear vision. 

And by the white light of a great illumination, 

And by the blood-red of brotherhood, 

Draw the sword, O Republic! 

Draw the sword! 

For the light which is England, 
And the resurrection which is Russia, 
And the sorrow which is France, 
And for peoples everywhere 
Crying in bondage, 
And in poverty! 

You have been a leaven in the earth, O Republic! 

And a watch-fire on the hill-top scattering sparks; 

And an eagle clanging his wings on a cloud-wrapped promontory: 

Now the leaven must be stirred. 

And the brands themselves carried and touched 

To the jungles and the black-forests. 

Now the eaglets are grown, they are calling, 

They are crying to each other from the peaks — 

They are flapping their passionate wings in the sunlight, 

Eager for battle! 

As a strong man nurses his youth 

To the day of trial; 

But as a strong man nurses it no more 

On the day of trial, 

But exults and cries For Victory, O Strength! 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 263 

And for the glory of my City, O treasured youth! 
You shall neither save your youth, 
Nor hoard your strength 
Beyond this hour, O Republic! 

For you have sworn 

By the passion of the Gaul, 

And the strength of the Teuton, 

And the will of the Saxon, 

And the hunger of the Poor, 

That the white man shall lie down by the black man, 

And by the yellow man. 

And all men shall be one spirit, as they are one flesh, 

Through Wisdom, Liberty and Democracy. 

And forasmuch as the earth cannot hold 

Aught beside them, 

You have dedicated the earth, O Republic, 

To Wisdom, Liberty and Democracy! 

By the power that drives the soul to Freedom, 
And by the Power that makes us love our fellows, 
And by the Power that comforts us in death, 
Dying for great races to come — 
Draw the sword, O RepubHc! 
Draw the sword! 

Edgar Lee Masters 



DOWN FIFTH AVENUE 

The crowd makes way for them. 

The mob of motors — ^women in motors, footmen in motors, Man- 
hattan's transients in motors, Hfe's transients in motors — has 
cleared and disappeared. 

And their mothers and their children, their wives, their lovers and 
friends, are lining the curb and knitting and whispering. 

The flags are floating and beckoning to them, the breezes are beckon- 
ing and whispering their secrets, 

That the city has hushed to hear, while trade and trivial things give 
place. 



264 NEW VOICES 

And through the crowd, that holds its breath too long, a restless stir 

like the starting of troubled breathing says, 
" They are coming." And the distant beat of feet begins to blend 

with the beat of laboring hearts; 
And the emptiness that missed a beat in the heart of the city 

becomes the street of a prayer and a passion. 
This is a street of mothers and their sons — for an hour in the life of 

Manhattan. 
And to-day makes way for them. 

The past makes way for them. 

This morning's discontent, yesterday's greed, last year's uncertainty, 
are muted and transmuted to a surging urge to victory. 

Spirits that stood at Bunker Hill and Valley Forge, Ticonderoga, 
Yorktown, Lundy's Lane, Fort Sumter, Appomatox, are resur- 
rected here; 

With older fathers and mothers who farmed, and pushed frontiers and 
homes for freedom westward steadily; 

With freedom's first grandfathers and forerunners, who grew to hold 
hill towers and forest fastnesses, and range the sea and all its 
shores and islands for the right to live for liberty. 

And their blood beats in these boy hearts, and their hill-bred and sea- 
bred strength is stirring in these feet that beat their measured 
cadences of courage. 

For now the tide is turning eastward at last. 

And the sound of the fall of their feet on the asphalt is the sound of 

the march of the waves of a tide that is flooding — 
Waves that marched to the western coast past forests and plains, 

mountains and deserts, and wrought their work in a world gone 

by. 
And the ripple of the ranks of these regiments that march to suffer and 

to die, is the ripple of a great brown river in flood that forges sea- 
ward; 
And the ripple of the light on eyes and lips that watch and work, is the 

swelHng of a greater flood that forces them to go. 
And the ripple and arrest of light on dull gun-barrels that crest their 

flow are runes of a ritual spelled in steel and a service enduring. 
And each beat of their feet and each beat of their hearts is a word in a 

gospel of steel that says the nations through ruins grow one again; 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 265 

When God's drill-master War has welded nations in ranks that their 

children may serve Him together. 
For to-morrow makes way for them. 

John Curtis Underwood 



THE CORNUCOPIA OF RED AND GREEN COMFITS 

In the town of Bar-le-Duc in the Province of the Meuse in France 
the Prefect has issued instructions to the Mayor, the school- 
masters and the schoolmistresses to prevent the children under 
their care from eating candies which may be dropped from Ger- 
man aeroplanes, as candies which were similarly scattered in 
other parts of the war zone have been found to contain poison 
and disease germs." — Daily News Report. 

Currants and Honey! 

Currants and Honey! 

Bar-le-Duc in times of peace. 

Linden-tassel honey, 

Cherry-blossom, poppy-sweet honey. 

And round red currants like grape clusters. 

Red and yellow globes, lustred like stretched umbrella silk, 

Money chinking in town pockets, 

Louis d'or in exchange for dockets of lading: 

So many jars. 

So many bushes shorn of their stars. 

So many honey-combs lifted from the hive-bars. 

Straw-pale honey and amber berries. 

Red-stained honey and currant cherries. 

Sweetness flowing out of Bar-le-Duc by every train, 

It rains prosperity in Bar-le-Duc in times of peace. 

Holy Jesus! when will there be mercy, when a ceasing 

Of War! 

The currant bushes are lopped and burned, 

The bees have flown and never returned, 

The children of Bar-le-Duc eat no more honey, 

And all the money in the town will not buy 

Enough lumps of sugar for a family. 

Father has two between sun and sun, 



2 66 NEW VOICES 

So has mother, and httle Jeanne, one. 

But Gaston and Marie — they have none. 

Two Httle children kneehng between the grape-vines. 

Praying to the starry virgin, 

They have seen her in church, shining out of a high window 

In a currant-red gown and a crown as smooth as honey. 

They clasp their hands and pray, 

And the sun shines brightly on them thru the stripped Autumn vines. 

Days and days pass slowly by, 

Still they measure sugar in the grocery, 

Lump and lump, and always none 

For Gaston and Marie, 

And for httle Jeanne, one. 

But Hsten, Children. Over there. 

In blue, peaked Germany, the fairies are. 

Witches who live in pine-tree glades. 

Gnomes deep in mines, with pickaxes and spades, 

Fairies who dance upon round grass rings. 

And a Rhine-river where a Lorelei sings. 

The kind German fairies know of your prayer, 

They caught it as it went through the air. 

Hush, Children! Christmas is coming. 

Christmas, and fairies, and cornucopias of sugar-plums! 

Hollow thunder over the Hartz mountains. 

Hollow thunder over the Black Forest. 

Hollow thunder over the Rhine. 

Hollow thunder over "Unter den Linden." 

Thunder kettles. 

Swung above green Ughtning fires, 

Forked and spired lightning 

Cooking candy. 

Bubble, froth, stew! 

Stir, old women; 

Stir, Generals and spur-heeled young officers; 

Stir, misshapen Kaiser, 

And shake the steam from your up-turned moustachios. 

Streaked and polished candy you make here, 

With hot sugar and — other things; 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 267 

Strange powders and liquids 

Dropped out of little flasks, 

Drop — 

Drop — 

Into the bubbling sugar, 

And all Germany laughs. 

For years the people have eaten the currants and honey of Bar-le- 

Duc, 
Now they will give back sweetness for sweetness. 
Ha! Ha! Ha! from Posen to Munich. 
Ha! Ha! Ha! in Schleswig-Holstein. 
Ha! Ha! Ha! flowing along with the Rhine waves. 
Ha! Ha! Ha! echoing round the caves of Riigen. 
Germany splits its sides with laughing, 
And sets out its candles for the coming of the Christ-child. 

*'HeiHge Nacht!" and great white birds flying over Germany. 

Are the storks returning in mid-Winter? 

"Heihge Nacht!" the tree is Ut and the gifts are ready. 

Steady, great birds, you have flown past Germany, 

And are hanging over Bar-le-Duc, in France. 

The moon is bright. 

The moon is clear. 

Come, little Children, the fairies are here. 

The good German fairies who heard your prayer, 

See them floating in the star-pricked air. 

The cornucopias shake on the tree. 

And the star-lamps glitter brilliantly. 

A shower of comfits, a shower of balls, 

Peppermint, chocolate, marzipan falls. 

Red and white spirals glint in the moon. 

Soon the fairies answered you — 

Soon! 

Soon! 

Bright are the red and white streaked candies in the moonlight: 

White corpse fingers pointing to the sky. 

Round blood-drops gHstening like rubies. 

Fairyland come true: 

Just pick and pick and suck, and chew. 



2 68 NEW VOICES 

Sugar and sweetness at last, 

Shiny stuff of joy to be had for the gathering. 

The blood-drops melt on the tongue, 

The corpse fingers splinter and crumble. 

Weep white tears, Moon. 

Soon! So soon! 

Something rattles behind a hedge, 

Rattles — rattles. 

An old skeleton is sitting on its thighbones 

And holding its giggling sides. 

Ha! Ha! Ha! 

Bar-le-Duc had currants red. 

Now she has instead her dead. 

Little children, sweet as honey, 

Bright as currants. 

Like berries snapped off and packed in coffins. 

The skeleton dances. 

Dances in the moonlight. 

And his fingers crack like castanets. 

In blue, peaked Germany 

The cooks wear iron crosses, 

And the scuUeiy maids trip to church 

In new ribbons sent from Potsdam. 



Amy Lowell 



SPRING SOWS HER SEEDS 

Why are you doing it this year, Spring? 
Why do you do this useless thing? 

Do you not know there are no men now? 
Why do you put on an apple bough 
Buds, and in a girl's heart, thronging 
Strange emotions: fear, and longing, 

Eager flight, and shy pursuing, 
Noble thoughts for her undoing; 

Wondering, accepting, straining, 
Wistful seizing, and refraining; 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 269 

Stern denying, answering? 

— Why do you toil so drolly, Spring? 

Who do you scheme and urge and plan 
To make a girl's heart ripe for a man, 

While the men are herded together where 
Death is the woman with whom they pair? 

Back fall my words to my Hstening ear. 
Spring is deaf, and she cannot hear. 

Spring is bhnd, and she cannot see. 
She does not know what war may be. 

Spring goes by, with her age-old sowing 

Of seeds in each girls' heart; kind, unknowing. 

And, too, in wy heart, (Spring, oh, heed!) 
Now in my own has fallen a seed. 

(Spring, give over!) I cringe, afraid. 
(Though I suffer, harm no other maid!) 

I hide my eyes, a budding tree 
Is so terrible to see. 

I stop my ears, a bird song clear 
Is a dreadful thing to hear. 

Seeds in each girl's heart she goes throwing. 
Oh, the crop of pain that is growing ! 

Mary Carolyn Davies 



ROUGE BOUQUET 

In a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet 
There is a new made grave to-day, 
Built by never a spade nor pick 
Yet covered with earth ten meters thick. 



2 70 NEW VOICES 

There lie many fighting men, 

Dead in their youthful prime, 
Never to laugh nor love again 

Nor taste the Summertime. 
For Death came flying through the air 
And stopped his flight at the dugout stair, 
Touched his prey and left them there, 

Clay to clay. 
He hid their bodies stealthily 
In the soil of the land they sought to free 

And fled away. 
Now over the grave abrupt and clear 

Three volleys ring; 
And perhaps their brave young spirits hear 

The bugle sing: 
"Go to sleep! 
Go to sleep! 

Slumber well where the shell screamed and feU. 
Let your rifles rest on the muddy floor, 
You will not need them any more. 
Danger's past; 
Now at last. 
Go to sleep!" 

There is on earth no worthier grave 
To hold the bodies of the brave 
Than this place of pain and pride 
Where they nobly fought and nobly died. 
Never fear but in the skies 
Saints and angels stand 
Smfling with their holy eyes 

On this new-come band. 
St. Michael's sword darts through the air 
And touches the aureole on his hair 
As he sees them stand saluting there. 

His stalwart sons; 
And Patrick, B rigid, Columkill 
Rejoice that in veins of warriors still 

The Gael's blood runs. 
And up to Heaven's doorway floats, 



PATRIOTISM AND THE GREAT WAR 271 

From the wood called Rouge Bouquet, 
A delicate cloud of buglenotes 

That softly say: 
"Farewell! 
Farewell! 

Comrades true, born anew, peace to you! 
Your souls shall be where the heroes are 
And your memory shine like the morning-star. 
Brave and dear, 
Shield us here. 
Farewell!", 

Joyce Kilmer 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 

For thousands of generations men have loved women and 
women have loved men. Through love they have known emo- 
tions of innumerable tones and flavors and colors. They have 
shared the rapture of the morning stars singing together and 
they have tasted the bitter waters of Marah. Poets have made 
this rapture and this bitterness communicable by singing with 
powerful emotional honesty the thing that was in their hearts. 

To-day, as in the past, poets are stirred by thoughts of love 
and of the old, primal things of the race. They write many 
poems about these things. But it is more difficult to find a good 
poem of love than to find any other kind of a good poem. It is 
not that the lyrics of love are badly written. They have charm 
and grace. But they lack something that would make them 
great; perhaps faith and dignity. Perhaps they are not quite 
strong enough, true enough, fresh enough. 

It may be that the reason for this is to be found in the kind 
of men and women we moderns are. We are pleasant and 
charming. We are seldom great. And to write a great poem of 
love a person must have had the capacity for loving as the great 
love and also the capacity for expressing himself. He may have 
missed hjs fulfillment. He may have been thwarted in his de- 
velopment. Life may have been hurt for him by some one else. 
He may have lived far, far below his best level of achievement. 
But the man who writes great love poetry must have had, at 
one time or another in his life, a latent greatness of personality. 
For better than anything else love poetry reveals a person's 
"might-have-been." 

We have in contemporary literature, as has been said, a great 
many poems of love. Most of them fall into either one of two 
groups, a group of poems of untrammeled naturalism and a 
group of poems gracefully conventional. Outside of these two 
groups are a few very beautiful lyrics. 

272 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 273 

The naturalistic love poems, it should suffice to say, are poems 
that glorify the fleeting passions and write a question mark after 
the story of Baucis and Philemon. They are sophisticated 
poems, very far indeed from the strong sanity of the folk. They 
are pessimistic poems, written as if their makers were a little 
bit afraid of loving any one person long enough to let it become a 
habit. The ideal of a growth in love and of a love fostered 
through the years seems to be alien to the philosophy of the 
poets who give us these naturalistic lyrics. To them, love and 
Hfe are forever experimental. 

The makers of the graceful lyrics, on the other hand, all too 
often see love through the eyes of their dead forefathers, and 
make of it simply a convention for literary uses. In their songs 
love is a theme, like the subject of a child's composition. They 
spin about it their inconsequent gossamers of literary fancy. 
To speak one word of light and fire seems to be beyond their 
power and beyond their desire. 

The more poems of love we read, the more we are likely to 
return mentally to the line from Rupert Brooke's sonnet, 
"Peace" in which he speaks of 

"their dirty songs and dreary, 
And all the little emptiness of love." 

Certainly we have few poems of love by contemporary poets 
that will bear comparison with the lyrics of love made by our 
predecessors on this continent, the American Indians, and col- 
lected in translation and included in a book edited by George W. 
Cronyn, called "The Path on The Rainbow." These poems are 
simple and passionate, clean and strong, just what love songs 
should be. The lines of the Ojibwa poem, " Calling-One's-Own," 
are resonant with the spirit of a great poet. 

"Awake! flower of the forest, sky-treading bird of the prairie. 
Awake! awake! wonderful fawn-eyed one. 

When you look upon me I am satisfied; as flowers that drink dew. 
The breath of your mouth is the fragrance of flowers in the morning, 
Your breath is their fragrance at evening in the moon-of -fading-leaf." 



2 74 NEW VOICES 

In such poems we find no tiresome self-analysis, no gross- 
ness, no mental sickness. Here is song as fresh and innocent 
as the fragrance of flowers in the "moon-of -fading-leaf." 

One of the finest groups of love poems written in recent years 
is the "Sonnets of A Portrait Painter," by Arthur Davison 
Ficke. A few of them have the fault of being somewhat literary 
in diction, but most of them are intensely human and written 
with great fluency, charm, and naturalness of rhythm. Some- 
times a pause in just the right place gives to a line the very qual- 
ity and accent of a lover's speech. And to have accomplished 
that in the old, old pattern of the sonnet, is to have achieved an 
unexpected miracle. Such lines are these, taken from one of the 
most beautiful sonnets, which begins, "I am in love with high, 
far-seeing places." 

"You who look on me with grave eyes where rapture 

And April love of Uving burn confessed — 
The gods are good! the world lies free to capture! 

Life has no walls. Oh, take me to your breast! 
Take me — be with me for a moment's span! 

I am in love with all unveiled faces. 
I seek the wonder at the heart of man; 

I would go up to the far-seeing places." 

Another, the tenth, begins with all the wistful and wilful im- 
mediacy of love — 

"Come forth: for Spring is singing in the boughs 

Of every white and tremulous apple-tree. 
This is the season of eternal vows; 

But what are vows that they should solace me?" 

Everybody who wishes to know the best lyrics of love written 
in recent years should read, among other things, some of these 
sonnets. 

Of the tragic poetry of love we have little in the poetry of 
to-day. It is the modern fashion to be perennially and per- 
sistently cheerful, and sometimes one is tempted to think that 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 275 

that peculiar child Polyanna has been preaching the "glad 
game" to the poets. At any rate, we can find in contemporary 
literature few poems to compare, either in sadness or in beauty, 
with Lyric XIV from "A Shropshire Lad" by A. E. Housman. 
The bitterness of love denied is sharply felt in this poem, and 
felt just as it is felt in life. The unhappy lover sees the "care- 
less people" who "call their souls their own" coming and going 
in the world about him. His sorrow sets him apart from them, 
in his own mind. His misery is, for him, unique. It makes 
the world seem frivolous. That is the psychology of it. This 
masterly Httle poem in five stanzas closes with these lines: 

"There flowers no balm to sain him 

From east of earth to west 
That's lost for everlasting 

The heart out of his breast. 

" Here by the labouring highway 

With empty hands I stroll: 
Sea-deep, till doomsday morning, 

Lie lost my heart and soul." 

Mr. Housman has spoken the almost unutterable sense of loss 
that oppresses all young lovers who have loved greatly and are 
bereft of love. 

Other men have written good poems of love, sometimes quite 
a number of them, sometimes only a few. Bliss Carman has. 
G. K. Chesterton has. But surely it is fair to say that no one man 
stands head and shoulders above his fellows, to-day, as a poet of 
the love of man for woman. 

Much better things can be said of the women who are singing 
songs of the love of woman for man. The love songs of modem 
women are more virile and beautiful— if one may say that of 
woman's work of expression — than the love songs of men. This 
is probably because women are learning to use their own voices 
and sing their own songs now almost for the first time in Anglo- 
Saxon history. No matter how talkative they may have been 
in private Ufe, in public women used to keep silence. And until 



2 76 NEW VOICES 

the time of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti 
women sang only what they thought they were expected to sing. 
The conventions of an androcentric culture imposed upon wo- 
men a spiritual bondage of reserve, indirection and disguise, 
from which only great genius or unusual daring could set them 
free. But it is the custom of critics who compare the small 
achievement of women in the arts, and especially in poetry, 
with the great achievements of their brothers, to forget or ignore 
the lets and hindrances that in ancient times, and in mediaeval 
times, often prevented women from learning to express them- 
selves adequately. Silence and repression were enjoined upon 
women by nearly all of the ancient religious systems, and the 
obligations that life imposed upon them were so heavy that 
small opportunity was left for the exercise of any gift of expres- 
sion. 

When women did begin to make their thoughts and feeUngs 
into poems they were still timid. A pen name was a prop to 
confidence. And they practised another device which served 
to conceal their own personal feeUngs; they dramatized the 
emotions of men in their lyrics. To dramatize masculine emo- 
tions or emotions of any other kind in narrative and dramatic 
poetry is all very well and a part of being an artist. But the 
subjective and personal lyric which is not the sincere expression 
of genuine emotion lacks vitality simply because it lacks direct- 
ness of appeal. 

It is a fine thing, therefore, to be able to say that the day of 
the bondage of silence has gone by for women, we hope forever. 
In our times a number of women here and across the water 
have begun to sing with competent sincerity of the love of 
woman for man. To-day real emotions are beginning to find 
a real expression and we are beginning to hope that, some day, 
we shall have a great poet of womanhood who will sing for the 
world of the woman's way of loving. 

It will be a great word, that woman's word, when it is spoken. 
It will be a word of the race as much as of the individual, strong 
with the spirit of the folk, and not remote from the plain, homely 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 277 

things of life. For the love of the best women for the men who 
are their mates is a love that is racial as well as individual. The 
woman who will make these great poems of to-morrow must 
have the wholesome vitality of a peasant, the virtue of a 
peasant, and the sensitivity of a great artist. . . . 

The women who are making the best contemporary lyrics of 
love have learned the first lesson of poetry, which is sincerity. 
They are capable of spiritual bravery. They do not pose. They 
strip off old cloaks and masks. They offer the world the best of 
themselves. Perhaps they even believe that nothing but their 
best is worthy of acceptance by the people. That may be why 
the word "poetess," with all its suggestion of tepid and insipid 
achievement, has gone out of fashion. To-day a few women are 
not "poetesses," but poets. 

One of them is Irene Rutherford McLeod. She has written 
a number of fine lyrics of love and is still so young that we have 
great hope that she will be heard often and for a long time to 
come. Her poem, "So beautiful You Are Indeed" is a record of 
that step into infinity, beyond madness and beyond wisdom, 
which great love sometimes enables the spirit of a man and the 
spirit of a woman to take together. 

"And when you bring your lips to mine 
My spirit trembles and escapes, 
And you and I are turned divine, 
Bereft of our familiar shapes. 

" And fearfully we tread cold space, 
Naked of flesh and winged with flame. 
. . . Until we find us face to face, 
Each calling on the other's name." 

Just as brave and just as lovely is Grace Fallow Norton's 
lyric, "Love Is A Terrible Thing." Men will hardly understand 
this poem as well as women. It is essentially feminine. If a 
man were to say that "Love is a terrible thing" he would not 
mean what a woman means when she says it. 



2 78 NEW VOICES 

" ' For there is a flame that has blown too near, 
And there is a name that has grown too dear, 
And there is a fear . . . ' 

And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky 

I made moan, 

'The heart in my bosom is not my own! 

'O would I were free as the wind on the wing; 
Love is a terrible thing!'" 

This is an admirable poem, not only because of its sincerity, but 
because it is a rare combination of lyrical rhythm with the ca- 
dences of natural speech. 

In her poem, ''Homage,'' Helen Hoyt speaks with reverence. 
This stanza is a clue to the meaning of the whole: 

"Not to myself, I knew, belonged your homage: 
I but the vessel of your holy drinking. 
The channel to you of that olden wonder 
Of love and womanhood, — I but a woman." 

Preeminent among living women who have written love songs 
with campetent sincerity, is Sara Teasdale. Her philosophy of 
poetry is a philosophy of absolute fidelity to the truth as it is 
felt. She believes that poets who will report themselves truly 
to the world can hardly fail, if they be poets in any real sense, 
to give the world poetry of unquestioned excellence. She be- 
lieves that the worst of all artistic immoralities is to say in a 
lyric what has not been felt in the heart. The statements made 
in it may be fancy or fiction, but the thing that is felt in it,— 
that must be true. Otherwise it can not have that certain and 
insistent quality which claims the allegiance of mankind and 
makes it not only unique but universal. 

Sara Teasdale has been true to this philosophy. She has been 
emotionally honest. She has keenly felt things that all women 
feel and she has given her emotions a true form and significance. 
Therefore her little songs, with their often wistful and sometimes 
exultant beauty, are now cherished by lovers of poetry wherever 
English is spoken. And, although her work has only been in 




^vhBI^' 



SARA TEASDALE 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 279 

general circulation for about ten years, many of her poems have 
been translated into other languages. It is not too much to 
claim that her best lyrics have the indefinable manner which 
belongs to poetry that hves. 

Her earlier poems express a whimsical coquetry that is de- 
lightfully feminine, and rich in the innocent, inherited wisdom 
of girlhood. This coquetry gives charm to such songs as "Four 
Winds," in which she says, 

"When thou art more cruel than he, 
Then will love be kind to thee." 

The same coquetry is in the refrain of "The Flight." 

"But what if I heard my first love calling me once more?" 

It persists with pleasing insouciance in two little quatrains 
called "Love Me," and in two others that make a poem called 
"The Look." It is an essential part of the delicate pathos of 
"The Song for Colin": 

"Pierrot laid down his lute to weep, 

And sighed, ' She sings for me.' 
But Colin slept a careless sleep 

Beneath an apple tree." 

In poems written a little later we find much more than this 
coquetry in the revelation of girlhood. The inward reaching of a 
woman's spirit toward that which she does not yet know, the 
mystical and undefined longing for fulfillment, like the longing 
of the branch for bud and blossom, these also she has expressed 
in her poems, "Twilight," "A Winter Night," "Spring Night," 
and others. In "Spring Night," especially, the mood is exquis- 
itely expressed. 

"Why am I crying after love 

With youth, a singing voice, and eyes 

To take earth's wonder by surprise?" 

If this were all, it would not be enough. But it is the 
smallest part of the beauty of her work. Her poems of the 



2 8o NEW VOICES 

finding of love never lack warmth and dignity. They are 
never purely ''literary." They never stagger through sloughs 
of metrical sentimentality. They are clean and simple. And, 
if they lack the elemental vigor that has thrilled and shaken 
our spirits in the best love poetry written by men, they keep 
always a certain glowing depth which is a part of the constancy 
of the love of women. 

Nor is it possible for a critic to refrain from mentioning her 
beautiful craftsmanship. She gives us melodies that are quiet, 
cool, sweet-flowing, of one kind with her emotion, the appropri- 
ate accompaniment of her meanings. They are always varied so 
that they avoid monotony. She chooses for her poems such 
symbols and images as are natural and relevant, avoiding all 
that is striking and sensational. She is never that most deplor- 
able of all pseudo-artists, the clever poet. And she is never trite, 
for all of her poems are the result of personal realization. She 
uses language without affectation, language simple enough for 
great and venerable uses. Her poems reecho in us because we 
can not fail to know at once just what they mean. They have a 
very remarkable clarity. 

Perhaps her song, ''I Would Live In Your Love," brings her 
as near as any of her lyrics to the ancient racial significance of 
the love of woman for man. It is short, poignant, perfect ac- 
cording to its kind. In it, as in all of her finest poems, she uses a 
single symbol to carry the weight of the thought. Anyone who 
knows the sea has watched the rise and fall of the sea-grasses, 
lifted and flattened out alternately by the flowing and ebbing 
of waves. That is the symbol of a woman's love which she uses 
in this magical stanza: 

"I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea, 
Borne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that 
recedes." 

In the poem, "Peace," the symbol of the woman who loves is the 
pool: 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 281 

"I am the pool of gold 

When sunset burns and dies — • 

You are my deepening skies; 
Give me your stars to hold!" 

But the noblest and most satisfying of all of her poems of love 
is one quite recently written in the incomparable Sapphic 
rhythm. In it love has become a light for the spirit in the 
ancient and eternal quest for the ultimate beauty and truth in 
the universe. This poem is called "The Lamp." It says more 
than the words of any critic can say of the delicately woven 
beauty, the quiet but shimmering colors of Sara Teasdale's 
best work. The strands of her poetry are not rough and robust. 
The hues of it shade into no strident scarlet, no flaring orange 
and green. But^ slender things are sometimes strong things, 
small things are sometimes great. And these little vari-colored 
lyrics show that she has felt poignantly, that she has shared the 
prescient and oracular moods of womanhood, and has expressed 
them with a warmth and intimacy not incompatible with fine 
artistic restraint. 

Close akin to the poetry of love, in the minds of women, is 
the poetry of motherhood and home. And this chapter would 
hardly be complete without brief mention of two poems about 
birth. They are "The Canticle of The Babe," by Josephine 
Preston Peabody, a subjective lyric of motherhood with unusual 
dignity and beauty, and "Birth" by Jean Starr Untermeyer, 
a poem which tells what another woman feels, standing beside a 
young mother in her hour of travail. Mrs. Untermeyer's poem, 
''Autumn" is also an interesting and original piece of work. 
It celebrates "pickling day" and is neither humorous nor sen- 
timental as poems of the home used to be. Instead it has some- 
thing of the dignity that rightly belongs to the most fundamental 
of all labors, the labor of preparing food, and it pays tribute, in 
high, just fashion to the genius of the home who is the genius of 
the folk, the mother. Mrs. Untermeyer says: 



282 NEW VOICES 

"And you moved among these mysteries, 

Absorbed and smiling and sure; 

Stirring, tasting, measuring, 

With the precision of a ritual. 

I Hke to think of you in your years of power- 

You, now so shaken and so powerless — 

High priestess of your home." 



CALLING-ONE'S-OWN 

Awake! flower of the forest, sky-treading bird of the prairie. 

Awake! awake! wonderful fawn-eyed One. 

When you look upon me I am satisfied; as flowers that drink dew. 

The breath of your mouth is the fragrance of flowers in the morning, 

Your breath is their fragrance at evening in the moon-of-fading-leaf . 

Do not the red streams of my veins run toward you 

As forest-streams to the sun in the moon of bright nights? 

When you are beside me my heart sings; a branch it is, dancing, 

Dancing before the Wind-spirit in the moon of strawberries. 

When you frown upon me, beloved, my heart grows dark — 

A shining river the shadows of clouds darken. 

Then with your smiles comes the sun and makes to look like gold 

Furrows the cold wind drew in the water's face. 

Myself! behold me! blood of my beating heart. 

Earth smiles — the waters smile — ^even the sky-of-clouds smiles — ^but I, 

I lose the way of smiling when you are not near, 

Awake! awake! my beloved. 

Translated from the Ojibwa by 

Charles Fenno Hoffman 



ALADDIN AND THE JINN 

"Bring me soft song," said Aladdin; 

"This tailor-shop sings not at all. 
Chant me a word of the twilight, 

Of roses that mourn in the fall. 
Bring me a song like hashish 

That will comfort the stale and the sad, 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 283 

For I would be mending my spirit, 

Forgetting these days that are bad, 
Forgetting companions too shallow, 

Their quarrels and arguments thin, 
Forgetting the shouting Muezzin." — 

^ I am your slave, ^^ said the Jinn. 

"Bring me old wines," said Aladdin, 

"I have been a starved pauper too long. 
Serve them in vessels of jade and of shell. 

Serve them with fruit and with song: — 
Wines of pre-Adamite Sultans 

Digged from beneath the black seas, 
New-gathered dew from the heavens 

Dripped down from Heaven's sweet trees: — 
Cups from the angels' pale tables 

That will make me both handsome and wise, 
For I have beheld her, the princess, 

FireHght and starlight her eyes 
Pauper I am, I would woo her. 

And — let me drink wine to begin. 
Though the Koran expressly forbids it." 

"/ am your slave" said the Jinn. 

"Plan me a dome," said Aladdin, 

"That is drawn Hke the dawn of the moon, 
When the sphere seems to rest on the mountains, 

Half -hidden, yet full-risen soon. 
Build me a dome," said Aladdin, 

"That shall cause all young lovers to sigh, 
The fullness of life and of beauty, 

Peace beyond peace to the eye — 
A palace of foam and of opal. 

Pure moonlight without and within, 
Where I may enthrone my sweet lady." 

"/ am your slave," said the Jinn. 

Vachd Lindsay 



2 84 NEW VOICES 

MY LIGHT WITH YOURS 



When the sea has devoured the ships, 

And the spires and the towers 

Have gone back to the hills. 

And all the cities 

Are one with the plains again. 

And the beauty of bronze 

And the strength of steel 

Are blown over silent continents, 

As the desert sand is blown — 

My dust with yours forever. 



When folly and wisdom are no more, 

And fire is no more. 

Because man is no more; 

When the dead world slowly spinning 

Drifts and falls through the void — 

My light with yours 

In the Light of Lights forever! 

Edgar Lee Masters 

I am in love with high far-seeing places 

That look on plains half-sunlight and half-storm, 

In love with hours when from the circKng faces 

Veils pass, and laughing fellowship glows warm. 

You who look on me with grave eyes where rapture 

And April love of living burn confessed — 

The gods are good! the world lies free to capture! 

Life has no walls. Oh, take me to your breast! 

Take me — ^be with me for a moment's span! 

I am in love with all unveiled faces. 

I seek the wonder at the heart of man; 

I would go up to the far-seeing places. 

While youth is ours, turn toward me for a space 

The marvel of your rapture-Hghted face! 

Arthur Davison Ficke 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 285 

There are strange shadows fostered of the moon, 
More numerous than the clear-cut shade of day. . . . 
Go forth, when all the leaves whisper of June, 
Into the dusk of swoopmg bats at play; 
Or go into that late November dusk 
When hills take on the noble Hnes of death, 
And on the air the faint astringent musk 
Of rotting leaves pours vaguely troubhng breath. 
Then shall you see shadows whereof the sun 
Knows nothing — aye, a thousand shadows there 
Shall leap and flicker and stir and stay and run, 
Like petrels of the changing foul or fair; 
Like ghosts of twihght, of the moon, of him 
Whose homeland hes past each horizon's rim. . . . 

Arthur Davison Ficke 



HOW MUCH OF GODHOOD 

How much of Godhood did it take — 

What purging epochs had to pass, 
Ere I was fit for leaf and lake 

And worthy of the patient grass? 

What mighty travails must have been, 

What ages must have moulded me. 
Ere I was raised and made akin 

To dawn, the daisy and the sea. 

In what great struggles was I felled, 

In what old lives I labored long, 
Ere I was given a world that held 

A meadow, butterflies, and song? 

But oh, what cleansings and what fears. 
What countless raisings from the dead, 

Ere I could see Her, touched with tears, 
Pillow the little weary head. 

Louis Untermeyer 



286 NEW VOICES 



AFTER TWO YEARS 

She is all so slight 
And tender and white 

As a May morning. 
She walks without hood 
At dusk. It is good 

To hear her sing. 

It is God's will 

That I shall love her still 

As He loves Mary. 
And night and day 
I will go forth to pray 

That she love me. 



She is as gold 

Lovely, and far more cold. 

Do thou pray with me, 
For if I win grace 
To kiss twice her face 

God has done well to me. 

Richard Aldington 



NIRVANA 

Sleep on, I lie at heaven's high oriels, 
Over the stars that murmur as they go 
Lighting your lattice-window far below. 

And every star some of the glory spells 
Whereof I know. 

I have forgotten you, long, long ago; 

Like the sweet, silver singing of thin bells 
Vanished, or music fading faint and low. 

Sleep on, I lie at heaven's high oriels, 
Who loved you so. 

John Hall Wheelock 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 287 

PERENNIAL MAY 

May walks the earth again, 
This old earth, and the same 
Green spurts of tender flame 
Burn now on sod and tree 
That burned when first she came, 
Dear love, to you and me. 
If any change there be — 
A greater or a less 
Degree of loveliness — 
It is not ours to see. 

Dear love. 
Not ours to feel or see. 

May thrills our hearts again, 
These old hearts, and the bough 
Burns not with blossoms now 
That blow more splendidly. 
For, since our wedded vow 
Made one of you and me, 
If any change there be — 
A greater or a less 
Degree of tenderness — 
It is not ours to see. 

Dear love. 
Not ours to feel or see. 

Thomas Augustine Daly 

SO BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE INDEED" 

So beautiful you are, indeed, 
That I am troubled when you come. 
And though I crave you for my need, 
Your nearness strikes me blind and dumb. 

And when you bring your lips to mine 
My spirit trembles and escapes, 
And you and I are turned divine, 
Bereft of our familiar shapes. 



2 88 NEW VOICES 

And fearfully we tread cold space, 
Naked of flesh and winged with flame, 
. . . Until we find us face to face, 
Each calling on the other's name! 

Irene Rutherford McLeod 

"I SAT AMONG THE GREEN LEAVES" 

I sat among the green leaves, and heard the nuts falling, 
The broadred butterflies were gold against the sun, 

But in between the silence and the sweet birds calling 
The nuts fell one by one. 

Why should they fall and the year but half over? 

Why should sorrow seek me and I so young and kind? 
The leaf is on the bough and the dew is on the clover, 

But the green nuts are falling in the wind. 

Oh, I gave my lips away and all my soul behind them. 

Why should trouble follow and the quick tears start? 
The little birds may love and fly with only God to mind them, 

But the green nuts are faUing on my heart. 

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall 

"GRANDMITHER, THINK NOT I FORGET" 

Grandmither, think not I forget, when I come back to town, 
An' wander the old ways again, an' tread them up and down. 
I never smell the clover bloom, nor see the swallows pass, 
Wi'out I mind how good ye were unto a little lass; 
I never hear the winter rain a-pelting all night through 
Wi'out I think and mind me of how cold it falls on you. 
An' if I come not often to your bed beneath the thyme. 
Mayhap 't is that I'd change wi' ye, and gie my bed for thine, 
Would like to sleep in thine. 

I never hear the summer winds among the roses blow 

Wi'out I wonder why it was ye loved the lassie so. 

Ye gave me cakes and lollipops and pretty toys a score — 

I never thought I should come back and ask ye now for more. 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 289 

Grandmither, gie me your still white hands that lie upon your breast, 
For mine do beat the dark all night and never find me rest; 
They grope among the shadows an' they beat the cold black air, 
They go seekin' in the darkness, an' they never find him there, 
They never find him there. 

Grandmither, gie me your sightless eyes, that I may never see 
His own a-burnin' full o' love that must not shine for me. 
Grandmither, gie me your peaceful Hps, white as the kirkyard snow, 
For mine be trembhn' wi' the wish that he must never know. 
Grandmither, gie me your clay-stopped ears, that I may never hear 
My lad a-singin' in the night when I am sick wi' fear; 
A-singin' when the moonfight over a' the land is white — 
Ah, God! I'll up and go to him, a-singin' in the night, 
A-callin' in the night. 

Grandmither, gie me your clay-cold heart, that has forgot to ache. 
For mine be fire wi'in my breast an' yet it cannot break. 
Wi' every beat it's calHn' for things that must not be, — 
So can ye not let me creep in an' rest awhile by ye? 
A little lass af eared o' dark slept by ye years agone — 
An' she has found what night can hold 'twixt sunset an' the dawn: 
So when I plant the rose an' rue above your grave for ye, 
Ye'll know it's under rue an' rose that I would like to be. 
That I would like to be. 

Willa Sihert Gather 



FROST IN SPRING 

Oh, had it been in Autumn, when all is spent and sere, 
That the first numb chill crept on us, with its ghostly hint of fear, 
I had borne to see love go, with things detached and frail. 
Swept outward with the blowing leaf on the unresting gale. 

But when day is a magic thing, when Time begins anew. 
When every clod is parted by Beauty breaking through, — 
How can it be that you and I bring Love no offering. 
How can it be that frost should fall upon us in the Spring! 

Jessie B. Rittenhouse 



290 



NEW VOICES 



PATRINS 



You know, dear, that the gipsies strew 
Some broken boughs along the way 

To mark the trail for one who comes, 
A tardy pilgrim of the day. 

And so my songs, that have no worth 
Save that best worth of being true, 

Are but as patrins strewn to show 
The way I came in loving you. 

Jessie B. Rittenhouse 

RAIN, RAIN! 

Rain, rain — fall, fall, 
In a heavy screen — 
That my lover be not seen! 

Wind, wind, — ^blow, blow. 
Till the leaves are stirred — 
That my lover be not heard! 

Storm, storm, — rage, rage. 
Like a war around — 
That my lover be not found! 

. . . Lark, lark, — hush . . . hush . . . 
Softer music make — • 
That my lover may not v/ake . . . 

Zo'e Akins 

HOMAGE 

Before me you bowed as before an altar, 
And I reached down and drew you to my bosom; 
Proud of your reverence, and reverence returning, 
But craving most your pleasure, not your awe. 

My hands about your head curved themselves, as holding 
A treasure, fragile and of glad possession! 
Dear were the bones of your skull beneath my fingers. 
And I grew brave imagining your defence. 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 291 

Not as a man I felt you in my brooding, 
But merely a babe, — a babe of my own body: 
Precious your worth, but dearer your dependence: 
Sometimes I wished to feed you at my breast. 

Not to myself, I knew, belonged your homage: 
I but the vessel of your holy drinking, 
The channel to you of that olden wonder 
Of love and womanhood, — I, but a woman. 

Then never need your memory be shamefaced 
That I have seen your flesh and soul at worship : 
Do you think I did not kneel when you were kneeling? 
Even lowlier bowed my head, and bowed my heart. 

Helen Hoyt 

A LYNMOUTH WIDOW* 

He was straight and strong, and his eyes were blue 
As the summer meeting of sky and sea. 
And the ruddy cliffs had a colder hue 
Than flushed his cheek when he married me. 

We passed the porch where the swallows breed, 
We left the little brown church behind. 
And I leaned on his arm, though I had no need. 
Only to feel him so strong and kind. 

One thing I never can quite forget; 

It grips my throat when I try to pray — 

The keen salt smell of a drying net 

That hung on the churchyard wall that day. 

He would have taken a long, long grave — 

A long, long grave, for he stood so tall . . . 

Oh, God! the crash of a breaking wave, 

And the smell of the nets on the churchyard wall! 

Amelia Josephine Burr 

*From In Deep Places by Amelia Josephine Burr. Copyright, 1914, George H. Doran 
Company, Publishers. 



292 



NEW VOICES 



LOVE IS A TERRIBLE THING 



I went out to the farthest meadow, 
I lay down in the deepest shadow; 

And I said unto the earth, "Hold me," 
And unto the night, " O enfold me," 

And unto the wind petulantly 

I cried, "You know not for you are free!" 

And I begged the Httle leaves to lean 
Low and together for a safe screen; 

Then to the stars I told my tale: 

"That is my home-light, there in the vale, 

"And O, I know that I shall return, 
But let me lie first mid the unfeehng fern. 

"For there is a flame that has blown too near. 
And there is a name that has grown too dear. 
And there is a fear ..." 

And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky I made moan, 
"The heart in my bosom is not my own! 

"O would I were free as the wind on the wing; 
Love is a terrible thing!" 

Grace Fallow Norton 



LOVE SONG 

I love my life, but not too well 
To give it to thee hke a flower. 

So it may pleasure thee to dwell 
Deep in its perfume but an hour. 

I love my life, but not too weU. 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 293 

I love my life, but not too well 

To sing it note by note away, 
So to thy soul the song may tell 

The beauty of the desolate day. 
I love my life, but not too well. 

I love my life but not too well 

To cast it like a cloak on thine, 
Against the storms that sound and swell 

Between thy lonely heart and mine. 
I love my life, but not too well. 

Harriet Monroe 



LOVE CAME BACK AT FALL O' DEW 

Love came back at fall o' dew, 
Playing his old part; 
But I had a word or two 
That would break his heart. 



"He who comes at candlelight, 
That should come before, 
Must betake him to the night 
From a barred door." 

This tne word that made us part 
In the fall o' dew; 

This the word that brake his heart — 
Yet it brake mine, too. 

Lizetie Woodworth Reese 



PEACE 

Peace flows into me 

As the tide to the pool by the shore; 

It is mine forevermore. 
It will not ebb like the sea. 



294 NEW VOICES 

I am the pool of blue 

That worships the vivid sky; 
My hopes were heaven-high, 

They are all fulfilled in you. 

I am the pool of gold 

When sunset burns and dies — • 
You are my deepening skies; 

Give me your stars to hold. 

Sara Teasdale 



I WOULD LIVE IN YOUR LOVE 

I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea, 

Born up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that 

recedes; 
I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me, 
I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul as it 

leads. 

Sara Teasdale 

THE LAMP 

If I can bear your love like a lamp before me, 
When I go down the long steep Road of Darkness, 
I shall not fear the everlasting shadows. 
Nor cry in terror. 

If I can find out God, then I shall find Him, 
If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly, 
Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me, 
A lamp in darkness. 

Sara Teasdale 



MATERNITY 

One wept, whose only babe was dead, 

New-born ten years ago. 
"Weep not; he is in bHss," they said. 

She answered, "Even so. 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 295 

"Ten years ago was born in pain 

A child, not now forlorn; 
But oh, ten years ago in vain 

A mother, a mother was born." 

Alice Meynell 

MOTHERHOOD 

Mary, the Christ long slain, passed silently, 
Following the children joyously astir 
Under the cedrus and the oHve-tree, 
Pausing to let their laughter float to her. 
Each voice an echo of a voice more dear, 
She saw a Httle Christ in every face; 
When lo, another woman, gliding near, 
Yearned o'er the tender Hfe that filled the place. 
And Mary sought the woman's hand, and spoke: 
" I know thee not, yet know thy memory tossed 
With all a thousand dreams their eyes evoke 
Who bring to thee a child beloved and lost. 

"I, too, have rocked my little one. 

Oh, He was fair! 

Yea, fairer than the fairest sun, 

And Hke its rays through amber spun 

His sun-bright hair. 

Still I can see it shine and shine." 

"Even so," the woman said, "was mine." 

"His ways were ever darling ways" — 

And Mary smiled — 

"So soft, so chnging! Glad relays 

Of love were all His precious days. 

My Httle child! 

My infinite star! My music fled!" 

"Even so was mine," the woman said. 

Then whispered Mary: "Tell me, thou, 
Of thine." And she: 
"Oh, mine was rosy as a bough 
Blooming with roses, sent, somehow, 



296 NEW VOICES 

To bloom for me! 

His balmy fingers left a thrill 

Within my breast that warms me still." 

Then gazed she down some wilder, darker hour, 
And said — when Mary questioned, knowing not: 
*'Who art thou, mother of so sweet a flower?" — 
"I am the mother of Iscariot." 

Agnes Lee 

SACRIFICE* 

When apple boughs are dim with bloom 

And lilacs blossom by the door, 
How sweetly poignant the perfume 

From springs that are no more! 

Strange how that faint, familiar scent 

Of early lilacs after rain 
By subtle alchemy is blent 

With childhood's tenderest joy and pain. 

Across the long mists of the way 

Are weary mothers seen through tears; 

They broke their lives from day to day 
To pour this fragrance down the years. 

Ada Foster Murray 

THE HOUSE AND THE ROAD 

The Httle Road says, Go, 
The little House says. Stay: 
And O, it's bonny here at home, 
But I must go away. 

The little Road, like me, 
Would seek and turn and know; 
And forth I must, to learn the things 
The little Road would show! 

• Copyright, 1910, by Harper & Brothers. 



LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 297 

And go I must, my dears, 

And journey while I may. 

Though heart be sore for the little House 

That had no word but Stay. 

Maybe, no other way 

Your child could ever know 

Why a Uttle House would have you stay, 

When a Httle Road says, Go. 

Josephine Preston Peabody 

MY MIRROR * 

There is a mirror in my room 
Less like a mirror than a tomb. 
There are so many ghosts that pass 
Across the surface of the glass. 

When in the morning I arise 
With circles round my tired eyes, 
Seeking the glass to brush my hair 
My mother's mother meets me there. 

If in the middle of the day 
I happen to go by that way, 
I see a smile I used to know — 
My mother, twenty years ago. 

But when I rise by candle-light 
To feed my bab}^ in the night, 
Then whitely in the glass I see 
My dead child's face look out at me. 

Aline Kilmer 

*From Candles Thai Burn by Alme Kilmer. Copyright, 1919, by George H. DoraQ 
Company, Publishers. 



RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 

The religious spirit is in the poetry of to-day, not as a theme in 
itself, and not as propaganda, but as an all-pervading force. 
Few poems that are poems in any real sense are written "about 
religion," or in defense of doctrines. This is probably very for- 
tunate for poetry and for rehgion. For unless a poet has been 
caught in a tremendous tide of popular religious feeling, a re- 
formation or a rebirth of spirituality, his poems that discuss 
doctrines and his poems purposefully written ''about religion" 
are likely to be dry and hard in their didacticism. Or, if they 
escape the dangers of aridity, poems made in this purposeful 
way are Hkely to fall into sticky sloughs of sentimentality 
whither only ladies of Don Marquis' Hermione group are likely 
to go to seek them. Among such persons any poem in which 
the holy name of God is mentioned, will, if read with perfervid 
intensity, bring instantaneous applause, no matter what the 
artistic value of the poem may be, no matter what is said about 
Him. Therefore it may be a very good thing that we have few 
poems of this kind, for, if we had more, many of them would 
probably be travesties of poetry and of religion. 

Moral didacticism in poetry is seldom pleasing to the con- 
temporary poet. He prefers to leave lessons to the teacher and 
sermons to the preacher. For this reason many thoughtful 
persons have questioned the moral value and tlie moral import- 
ance of our contemporary poetry. But sincere thinking should 
suggest the idea that poetry may be very valuable morally, 
even when morals are not pointed out and explained in it. 
"Rhymed ethics" and "rhythmical persuasions" are not neces- 
sarily productive of the finest worship and wonder. 

The fact is simply this, that the modern poet beheves that 
explanations often hurt that beauty which they are meant to 

298 



RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 299 

serve. Therefore he paints his picture, sings his song, tells his 
story, and hopes that the Hght of his spirit shining through his 
work will accompHsh the essential revelation. He trusts our 
intelligence. He beheves that people who have honest and com- 
petent noses can tell a sprig of mignonette from a slice of onion 
when both are held in convenient juxtaposition. He thinks 
that he does not need to argue with us about what is bad and 
what is good. He knows that he must truly tell the truth about 
life and beautifully show the beauty in it. He knows, also, 
that his own sympathies will be in his poems almost without his 
consent. In his S3nnpathetic sharing of beauty and truth he 
provides a discipline for the human spirit, for to share beauty and 
truth is to be changed by them. And forever and forever the 
discipUned spirits of many good men and women create, up- 
hold, and inspire good morals. It can not be otherwise. The 
water of the swamp is brackish because it is in the swamp. 
The water of the spring is sweet because it is in the spring. In 
the disciplined spirits of the multitude and in their power to 
perceive and share beauty and truth is the regeneration of the 
race. Poetry is not impertinent comment on conduct. It is the 
sharing of the best in Uf e. Can we truly say that it has no moral 
value? 

Religion is in contemporary poetry then, or, if you like, God 
is in it, as a spirit. This spirit touches all great themes. In 
the minds of the moderns it is one with the love of man, one with 
the love of man and woman, one with the joy that we feel in the 
evanescent glory of a sunset, one with the desire for democracy 
and with the passions of the evolving race. It is the motive 
power of our humanitarian ideahsm. It belongs to hero-wor- 
ship. It is in accord with that fearless and passionate love of 
the search for truth, no matter how stern a thing truth may 
prove to be when it is found, that is a distinguishing character- 
istic of the devotees of science. And, since this is true, we may 
as well admit that, in a broad, general way, all good poems are 
religious. 

But poems have been written by many of our contemporaries 



300 NEW VOICES 

that are religious in a special way. They are the expression of 
emotions commonly called religious. They are songs of worship 
and wonder. Or they are poems that have their source of 
strength in symbols and personalities which have long been 
associated with religion in the minds of the people. Such 
poems are exceedingly valuable and should be carefully con- 
sidered. 

One of the loveliest of modern lyrics of worship is "Lord of 
My Heart's Elation" by BHss Carman. It is quite essentially 
a modern poem. No doctrine is urged upon us in any hne of it. 
The poet has not tied himself down to earth with strands of 
opinion. The faith of the poem is a brave, agnostic faith, a 
faith that does not know. The poem is a poem of affirmation 
only in so far as it affirms the little knowledge which the poet 
shares with Everyman. 

" As the foamheads are loosened 
And blown along the sea, 
Or sink and merge forever 
In that which bids them be. 

"I, too, must climb in wonder, 
Uplift at thy command, — 
Be one with my frail fellows 
Beneath the wind's strong hand, 

" A fleet and shadowy column 
Of dust or mountain rain, 
To walk the earth a moment 
And be dissolved again." 

But out of this Httle knowledge comes the pure lyric cry of 
worship and self-surrender: 

"Be thou my exaltation 
Or fortitude of mien. 
Lord of the world's elation. 
Thou breath of things unseen!" 



RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 301 

Another lyric that is quite as truly a poem of worship is 
Joyce Kilmer's "Trees," the best known of his poems and cer- 
tainly one of the most beautiful things he ever wrote. The 
charm of it is in the sweetness and humility of the emotion 
expressed and in the absolute simplicity and directness of the 
expression. A poem, surely, is one of the noblest of the works 
of man, and yet, to this young CathoHc poet, the genesis of a 
poem is nothing in comparison with the growth of a tree. 

"Poems are made by fools like me, 
But only God can make a tree." 

Joyce Kilmer has written a number of good religious poems 
which will mean more to Catholics than to other readers. Among 
the best are "Folly," "Stars," "St. Alexis," and "The Rosary." 
But "Trees" is a poem that appeals to all men and women who 
have been humbled and made reverent before the beauty of the 
natural world. 

"The Falconer of God," by William Rose Benet, is a religious 
lyric of quite another kind. It is a poem which tells a story of 
personal religious experience in a most admirable way, in strong 
and satisfying symbols. Contemporary poetry can offer nothing 
better of its kind, Httle so good. The falcon is Mr. Benet's sym- 
bol for the human spirit, that is always rising to seek and capture 
a flying loveliness. That flying loveliness is the heron: 

"I shall start a heron soon 
In the marsh beneath the moon — 
A wondrous silver heron its inner darkness fledges!" 

The soaring falcon brings back a burden of disappointment, 
but rises again and again into the heavens seeking its own: 

"The pledge is still the same — for all disastrous pledges, 
All hopes resigned ! 
My soul still flies above me for the quarry it shall find!" 

When we interpret symbols we must be guarded, we must speak 
very finely and delicately. It is better to say very Uttle than to 



302 NEW VOICES 

say too much. But perhaps this is even more than a poem of 
personal spiritual experience. Perhaps it tells the spiritual story 
of Everyman and of the race. Certainly, in poems like this are 
*' wordless, wondrous things" for all who will have them. And 
in this poem they are set to a very lovely music. 

In other poems of to-day that have to do with religious themes 
we find the prescience of immortality which mankind has never 
yet been willing to forego. This is echoed again and again in 
Witter Bynner's "The New World." It is in an intimate and 
exquisite sonnet by Thomas S. Jones, Jr., in which he says, 

''Once have I looked upon the burning grail, 
And through your eyes have seen beyond the grave." 

It may be that this behef in the "communion of saints " has been 
strengthened somewhat by the influence of the poets of the Orient 
whose way of thinking is really communion or meditation, a way 
of projecting the mind out of self into the world whose walls are 
built in air, whose gates must be dreams. 

In sharp contrast with such poems as these we may set a poem 
like Max Eastman's "Invocation." This is not a poem to give 
comfort. It is not peace, but a sword. It is the acceptance 
of the sword. It is a poem about truth and a prayer for truth, 
whether truth be hard or easy, harsh or kind. But it is devout 
and hardy, a masterpiece in five fines. 

"Truth, be more precious to me than the eyes 
Of happy love!" 

That is the brave speech of thousands of the best modems. 

But the most interesting fact about the religious poetry of 
to-day is that we live in a period when nearly all poets are writing 
about Christ. In a time when the world questions the validity 
of many old dogmas and formulae once respected, the human 
bravery, dignity, cleanliness and kindliness of the life of Christ 
have taken hold upon the imaginations of poets in a new way. 

In her admirable anthology, "Christ In The Poetry of To- 
day," Martha Foote Crow tells us that many, many more good 



RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 303 

poems have been written about Christ in the period since 
1900 than were written in the twenty years before that time. 
And it is the especial merit of her book that it shows how Christ 
has been all things to aU men. Each poet represented in it may 
be thought of as speaking for thousands of men and women who 
would think and feel as he does. And this is a collection of poems 
by all kinds of poets, radical and conservative, not a collection of 
sentimental conservative verse. Some of the poems are robust 
character studies. Others are graceful legends. Others are 
lyrics of worship. But all of them, whether written by church- 
men or agnostics, whether they are written in praise of the 
Christ of the churches, or, out of love for the personality of the 
Man of Sorrows, are reverent, each in its own way and accord- 
ing to its kind. 

With a very feminine gentleness of thought and emotion 
Lizette Woodworth Reese has written a poem about the baby 
Jesus, in which she retells the legend, 

"The Ox put forth a horned head; 

' Come, little Lord, here make Thy bed.' 

Uprose the sheep were folded near; 
'Thou Lamb of God, come, enter here.' " 

Theodosia Garrison retells another legend, the story of how 
the httle Jesus chose the rude gift of the shepherd, not the rich 
gifts of the wise kings to hold in his small hands. The shepherd's 
gift was only a little cross made of twigs, 

"And in his hold the cross lay cold" 

between his heart and the heart of the mother in whose arms he 
lay. 

Carl Sandburg is a poet who beheves in the candor and wisdom 
of childhood. He sees in the Christ Child a type of this candor 
and wisdom. His poem is about the Christ talking with the old 
men in the temple when He was only a young lad. In describing 



304 NEW VOICES 

the boy, Christ, Mr. Sandburg uses two adjectives which other 
boys have liked to use in describing their friends. He says, 

"The young child, Christ, is straight and wise 
And asks questions of the old men, questions 
Found under running water for all children, 
And found under shadows thrown on still waters 
By tall trees looking downward," 

Who has not seen a young boy, "straight and wise," with clear 
eyes and eager mind and heart, talking to old men sitting before 
the doors of home in the evening, or on the steps of the tem.ple, 
or in the market place? Perhaps it has been in such talks that 
the great traditions of the race and the old folk tales have been 
handed down from generation to generation. When we see how 
such a poem is related to Ufe and its homely realities we realize 
that the thought of Christ talking with the learned old men in 
the temple is illuminated and enlarged for us by reading it. 

Many of the poets have tried to surround Christ with such 
homely realities of life as belong to simple people now and 
always. They have shown Him at work with Joseph in the car- 
penter shop. Elsa Barker tells of the dumb bewilderment of 
Joseph, of his love for Mary and for her Child, in "The Vigil of 
Joseph." 

"'Brawny these arms to win Him bread, and broad 
This bosom to sustain Her. But my heart 
Quivers in lonely pain before that beauty 
It loves — and serves — and cannot understand!'" 

Sarah N. Cleghorn writes a poem of quite another kind. She 
shows us the Christ in whom the Christian socialists beHeve. 
He is the Great Comrade. The poem is written in terse, effective 
language which may seem unsuitable to orthodox people who 
have never shared the thoughts and emotions of those for whom 
it is intended. But to those who have shared these thoughts and 
emotions the poem will seem reverent and powerful. It is called 
"Comrade Jesus" and begins with these lines: 



RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 305 

"Thanks to Saint Matthew, who had been 
At mass-meetings in Palestine, 
We know whose side was spoken for 
When Comrade Jesus had the floor." 

Other answers we have to the old, old question, "What think 
ye of Christ?" In "The Unbeliever " Anna Hempstead Branch 
gives the answer of the agnostic: 

"Even he that grieves thee most "Lord, Lord," he saith. 
So will I call on thee with my last breath! 
Brother, not once have I believed in thee. 
Yet am I wounded far thee unto death. 

Even the world that turns away from the ecclesiastical Christ 
subdues its heart and bends its head before the Jesus of the 
Crucifixion. 

Florence Kiper Frank, speaking for the Hebrew people, ex- 
presses a strong racial sympathy for the noblest of martyrs. In 
her interesting sonnet, "The Jew To Jesus," she says: 

"We have drained the bitter cup, and, tortured, felt 

With thee the bruising of each bitter welt. 

In every land is our Gethsemane. 

A thousand times have we been crucified." 

But, oddly enough, one of the strongest of modern poems about 
Christ comes to us from that arch-radical and caustic critic, 
Ezra Pound. It is called the "Ballad of the Goodly Fere," and 
it is written as if it had been spoken by Simon Zelotes shortly 
after the Crucifixion. Many poems have been written about the 
gentleness of Christ. This poem is about His manHness and His 
bravery. 

"He cried no cry when they drave the nails 
And the blood gushed hot and free, 
The hounds of the crimson sky gave tongue 
But never a cry cried he. 



3o6 NEW VOICES 

" I ha' seen him cow a thousand men 

On the hills o' Galilee, 

They whined as he walked out calm between, 

Wi' his eyes like the gray o' the sea. 

" Like the sea that brooks no voyaging 
With the winds unleashed and free, 
Like the sea that he cowed at Genseret 
Wi' twey words spoke' suddently." 

Many other poems might be quoted to show what poets of 
to-day have thought and felt about Christ. And readers of 
these poems would like or dislike them in ways that would cor- 
respond to their own personal answers to the question, "What 
think ye of Christ? " The poem that pleases the Christian social- 
ist will not necessarily please the orthodox churchman. The 
poem that satisfies the radical may displease the conservative. 
But the significant thing to remember is that all kinds of men and 
women have seen, in The King of the Crossed Trees, their own 
ideaUsm, the highest goal of their own spirits. Christ, the Son 
of Man, is, for many persons in all the warring sects, the arch- 
t3rpe of spiritual beauty, the personal force in religion. This is 
what the poets have tried to put into contemporary religious 
poetry, each in his own way. And, in so doing, they have 
brought us a little nearer to an understanding of the beauty of 
holiness. 



LORD OF MY HEART'S ELATION 

Lord of my heart's elation, 
Spirit of things unseen, 
Be thou my aspiration 
Consuming and serene! 

Bear up, bear out, bear onward. 
This mortal soul alone, 
To selfhood or oblivion, 
Incredibly thine own, — 



RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 307 

As the foamheads are loosened 
And blown along the sea, 
Or sink and merge forever 
In that which bids them be. 

I, too, must cHmb in wonder, 
UpUft at thy command, — 
Be one with my frail fellows 
Beneath the wind's strong hand. 

A fleet and shadowy column 
Of dust or mountain rain. 
To walk the earth a moment 
And be dissolved again. 

Be thou my exaltation 
Or fortitude of mien. 
Lord of the world's elation, 
Thou breath of things unseen! 

Bliss Carman 



THE FALCONER OF GOD 

I flung my soul to the air like a falcon flying. 
I said, "Wait on, wait on, while I ride below! 

I shall start a heron soon 

In the marsh beneath the moon — • 
A strange white heron rising with silver on its wings, 
Rismg and crying 

Wordless, wondrous things; 

The secret of the stars, of the world's heart-strings 
The answer to their woe. 
Then stoop thou upon him, and grip and hold him so!" 

My wild soul waited on as falcons hover. 
I beat the reedy fens as I trampled past. 

I heard the mournful loon 

In the marsh beneath the moon. 



3o8 NEW VOICES 

And then, with feathery thunder, the bird of my desire 
Broke from the cover 
Flashing silver fire. 
High up among the stars I saw his pinions spire. 
The pale clouds gazed aghast 
As my falcon stooped upon him, and gript and held him fast. 

My soul dropped through the air — ^with heavenly plunder? — 
Gripping the dazzling bird my dreaming knew? 
Nay! but a piteous freight, 
A dark and heav>' weight 
Despoiled of silver plumage, its voice forever stilled, — 
All of the wonder 
Gone that ever filled 
Its guise with glory. O bird that I have killed, 
How brilliantly you flew 
Across my rapturous vision when first I dreamed of you! 

Yet I fling my soul on high with new endeavor, 
And I ride the world below with a joyful mind. 
/ shall start a heron soon 
In the marsh beneath the moon — • 
A wondrous silver heron its inner darkness fledges! 
I beat forever 
The fens and the sedges. 
The pledge is still the same — for all disastrous pledges, 
All hopes resigned! 
My soul still flies above me for the quarry it shall find ! 

William Rose Bentt 

THE PATH OF THE STARS 

Down through the spheres that chant the Name of One 

Who is the Law of Beauty and of Light 

He came, and as He came the waiting Night 
Shook with the gladness of a Day begun; 
And as He came, He said: Thy Will Be Done 

On Earth ; and all His vibrant Words were white 

And glistering with silver, and their might 
Was of the glory of a rising sun. 



RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 309 

Unto the Stars sang out His Living Words 

White and with silver, and their rhythmic sound 

Was as a mighty symphony unfurled; 

And back from out the Stars like homing birds 

They fell in love upon the sleeping ground 

And were forever in a wakened world. 

Thomas S. Jones, Jr. 



GOD, YOU HAVE BEEN TOO GOOD TO ME" 

God, You have been too good to me, 
You don't know what You've done. 
A clod's too small to drink in all 
The treasure of the sun. 

The pitcher fills the lifted cup 
And still the blessings pour 
They overbrim the shallow rim 
With cool refreshing store. 

You are too prodigal with joy, 
Too careless of its worth, 
To let the stream with crystal gleam 
Fall wasted on the earth. 

Let m_any thirsty lips draw near 
And quaff the greater part! 
There still will be too much for me 
To hold in one glad heart. 

Charles Wharton Stork 



TWO VOICES 

There is a country full of wine 
And Hquor of the sun. 
Where sap is running all the year, 
And spring is never done. 
Where all is good as it is fair, 
And love and will are one. 



3IO NEW VOICES 

Old age may never come there, 
But ever in to-day 
The people talk as in a dream 
And laugh slow time away. 

But would you stay as now you are, 

Or as a year ago? 

Oh, not as then, for then how small 

The wisdom we did owe! 

Or if forever as to-day, 

How little we could know! 

Then welcome age, and fear not sorrow; 

To-day's no better than to-morrow, 

Or yesterday that flies. 

By the low Hght in your eyes. 

By the love that in me lies, 

I know we grow more lovely 

Growing wise. 

Alice Cor bin 

INVOCATION 

Truth, be more precious to me than the eyes 
Of happy love; burn hotter in my throat 
Than passion, and possess me like my pride; 
More sweet than freedom, more desired than joy, 
More sacred than the pleasing of a friend. 

Max Eastman 

TREES 

I think that I shall never see 
A poem lovely as a tree. 

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest 
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast; 

A tree that looks at God all day, 
And lifts her leafy arms to pray; 

A tree that may in summer wear 
A nest of robins in her hair; 



RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 311 

Upon whose bosom snow has lain ; 
Who intimately lives with rain. 

Poems are made by fools like me, 
But only God can make a tree. 

Joyce Kilmer 

GOOD COMPANY 

To-day I have grown taller from walking with the trees, 
The seven sister-poplars who go softly in a line; 
And I think my heart is whiter for its parley with a star 
That trembled out at nightfall and hung above the pine. 
The call-note of a redbird from the cedars in the dusk 
Woke his happy mate within me to an answer free and fine; 
And a sudden angel beckoned from a column of blue smoke — 
Lord, who am I that they should stoop — these holy folk of thine? 

Karle Wilson Baker 



TWO NARRATIVES FROM "FRUIT-GATHERING" 



"Sire," announced the servant to the King, "the saint Narottam 
has never deigned to enter your royal temple. 

"He is singing God's praise under the trees by the open road. The 
temple is empty of worshippers. 

"They flock round him like bees round the white lotus, leaving the 
golden jar of honey unheeded." 

The King, vexed at heart, went to the spot where Narottam sat 
on the grass. 

He asked him, "Father, why leave my temple of the golden dome 
and sit on the dust outside to preach God's love?" 

"Because God is not there in your temple," said Narottam. 

The King frowned and said, "Do you know, twenty millions of 
gold went to the making of that marvel of art, and it was consecrated 
to God with costly rites?" 

"Yes, I know it," answered Narottam. "It was in that year when 
thousands of your people whose houses had been burned stood vainly 
asking for help at your door. 



312 NEW VOICES 

"And God said, 'The poor creature who can give no shelter to his 
brothers would build my house!' 

"And he took his place with the shelterless under the trees by the 
road. 

"And that golden bubble is empty of all but hot vapour of pride.'* 

The King cried in anger, "Leave my land." 

Calmly said the saint, "Yes, banish me where you have banished 
my God." 

n 

Sudas, the gardener, plucked from his tank the last lotus left by 
the ravage of winter and went to sell it to the king at the palace gate. 

There he met a traveller who said to him, "Ask your price for the 
last lotus, — I shall offer it to Lord Buddha." 

Sudas said, "If you pay one golden masha it will be yours." 

The traveller paid it. 

At that moment the king came out and he wished to buy the flower, 
for he was on his way to see Lord Buddha, and he thought, "It would 
be a fine thing to lay at his feet the lotus that bloomed in winter." 

When the gardener said he had been offered a golden masha the 
king offered him ten, but the traveller doubled the price. 

The gardener, being greedy, imagined a greater gain from him for 
whose sake they were biddng. He bowed and said, "I cannot sell 
this lotus." 

In the hushed shade of the mango grove beyond the city wall Sudas 
stood before Lord Buddha, on whose lips sat the silence of love and 
whose eyes beamed peace like the morning star of the dew-washed 
autumn. 

Sudas looked in his face and put the lotus at his feet and bowed 
his head to the dust. 

Buddha smiled and asked, "What is your wish, my son?" 

Sudas cried, "The least touch of your feet." 

Rahindranath Tagore 

THE BIRTH* 

There is a legend that the love of God 
So quickened under Mary's heart it wrought 
Her very maidenhood to hoher stuff. . . . 
However that may be, the birth befell 

• Copyright, 1915, by Harper & Brothers. 



RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 313 

Upon a night when all the Syrian stars 

Swayed tremulous before one lordher orb 

That rose in gradual splendor, 

Paused, 

Flooding the firmament with mystic light, 

And dropped upon the breathing hills 

A sudden music 

Like a distillation from its gleams; 

A rain of spirit and a dew of song! 

Don Marquis 

A CHRISTMAS FOLK-SONG 

The Little Jesus came to town; 
The wind blew up, the wind blew down; 
Out in the street the wind was bold; 
Now who would house Him from the cold? 

Then opened wide a stable door, 

Fair were the rushes on the floor; 

The Ox put forth a horned head; 

" Come, Httle Lord, here make Thy bed." 

Uprose the Sheep were folded near; 
"Thou Lamb of God, come, enter here." 
He entered there to rush and reed. 
Who was the Lamb of God indeed. 

The little Jesus came to town; 
With ox and sheep He laid Him down; 
Peace to the byre, peace to the fold, 
For that they housed Him from the cold! 

Lizette Woodworth Reese 



THE VIGIL OF JOSEPH 

After the Wise Men went, and the strange star 

Had faded out, Joseph the father sat 

Watching the sleeping Mother and the Babe, 

And thinking stern, sweet thoughts the long night through. 



314 NEW VOICES 

"Ah, what am I, that God has chosen me 
To bear this blessed burden, to endure 
Daily the presence of this loveliness, 
To guide this Glory that shall guide the world? 

"Brawny these arms to win Him bread, and broad 
This bosom to sustain Her. But my heart 
Quivers in lonely pain before that Beauty 
It loves — and serves — and cannot understand!" 

Elsa Barker 

CHILD 

The young child, Christ, is straight and wise 

And asks questions of the old men, questions 

Found under running water for all children, 

And found under shadows thrown on still waters 

By tall trees looking downward, old and gnarled, 

Found to the eyes of children alone, untold, 

Singing a low song in the loneliness. 

And the young child, Christ, goes on asking 

And the old men answer nothing and only know love 

For the young child, Christ, straight and wise. 

Carl Sandburg 

COMRADE JESUS 

Thanks to Saint Matthew, who had been 
At mass-meetings in Palestine, 
We know whose side was spoken for 
When Comrade Jesus had the floor. 

"Where sore they toil and hard they lie, 
Among the great unwashed, dwell I; — 
The tramp, the convict, I am he; 
Cold-shoulder him, cold-shoulder me." 

By Dives' door, with thoughtful eye, 
He did to-morrow prophesy: — 
"The kingdom's gate is low and small; 
The rich can scarce wedge through at all." 



RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 315 

"A dangerous man," said Caiaphas, 
"An ignorant demagogue, alas! 
Friend of low women, it is he 
Slanders the upright Pharisee." 

For law and order, it was plain, 
For Holy Church, he must be slain. 
The troops were there to awe the crowd: 
And violence was not allowed. 

Their clumsy force with force to foil 
His strong, clean hands we would not soil. 
He saw their childishness quite plain 
Between the hghtnings of his pain. 

Between the twilights of his end, 
He made his fellow-felon friend : 
With swollen tongue and blinded eyes, 
Invited him to Paradise. 

Ah, let no Local him refuse! 
Comrade Jesus hath paid his dues. 
Whatever other be debarred. 
Comrade Jesus hath his red card. 

Sarah N. Cleghorn 

AN UNBELIEVER 

All these on whom the sacred seal was set. 
They could forsake thee while thine eyes were wet. 
Brother, not once have I believed in thee, 
Yet having seen I cannot once forget. 

I have looked long into those friendly eyes. 
And found thee dreaming, fragile and unwise. 
Brother, not once have I beUeved in thee. 
Yet have I loved thee for thy gracious Hes. 

One broke thee with a kiss at eventide, 

And he that loved thee well has thrice denied. 

Brother, I have no faith in thee at all. 

Yet must I seek thy hands, thy feet, thy side. 



3i6 NEW VOICES 

Behold that John that leaned upon thy breast; 
His eyes grew heavy and he needs must rest. 
I watched unseen through dark Gethsemane 
And might not slumber, for I loved thee best. 

Peace thou wilt give to them of troubled mind, 

Bread to the hungry, spittle to the blind. 

My heart is broken for my unbelief. 

But that thou canst not heal, though thou art kind. 

They asked one day to sit beside thy throne. 
I made one prayer, in silence and alone. 
Brother, thou knowest my unbelief in thee. 
Bear not my sins, for thou must bear thine own. 

Even he that grieves thee most "Lord, Lord," he saith, 
So will I call on thee with my last breath! 
Brother, not once have I believed in thee. 
Yet I am wounded for thee unto death. 

Anna Hempstead Branch 



THE JEW TO JESUS 

Man of my own people, I alone 
Among these alien ones can know thy face, 

1 who have felt the kinship of our race 
Burn in me as I sit where they intone 

Thy praises, — those who, striving to make known 
A God for sacrifice, have missed the grace 
Of thy sweet human meaning in its place, 
Thou who art of our blood-bond and our own. 

Are we not sharers of thy Passion? Yea, 

In spirit-anguish closely by thy side 

We have drained the bitter cup, and, tortured, felt 

With thee the bruising of each heavy welt. 

In every land is our Gethsemane. 

A thousand times have we been crucified. 

Florence Kiper Frank 



RELIGION IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 317 

THE BALLAD OF THE CROSS 

Melchior, Caspar, Balthazar, 

Great gifts they bore and meet; 
White linen for His body fair 

And purple for His feet; 
And golden things— the joy of kings— 

And myrrh to breathe Him sweet. 

It was the shepherd Terish spake, 

"Oh, poor the gift I bring— 
A little cross of broken twigs, 

A hind's gift to a king- 
Yet, haply, He may smile to see 

And know my offering." 

And it was Mary held her Son 

Full softly to her breast, 
*' Great gifts and sweet are at Thy feet 

And wonders king-possessed, 
O Uttle Son, take Thou the one 

That pleasures Thee the best." 

It was the Christ-Child in her arms 

Who turned from gaud and gold. 
Who turned from wondrous gifts and great. 

From purple woof and fold. 
And to His breast the cross He pressed 

That scarce His hands could hold. 

'Twas king and shepherd went their way- 
Great wonder tore their bhss; 

'Twas Mary clasped her Uttle Son 
Close, close to feel her kiss. 

And in His hold the cross lay cold 
Between her heart and HisI 

Theodosia Garrison 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 

In the past decade the stimulating themes of democracy, 
industrial civilization and the great war have engaged the at- 
tention of the poets. But the ancient and everlasting themes 
of human Hfe have never been forgotten. While we have love 
and birth and death, poets will sing of them. While we have 
changing seasons and streams clamorous with the white danger 
of rapids, woods blessed by early hepaticas or late asters, poets 
will go back to the open world for refuge and for inspiration. 
The joy and solace of that open world will be echoed in their 
poems. 

Probably the poets of to-day have written as many poems of 
nature as were ever written in any period. Even poets who can 
seldom summon sufficient vigor of spirit to write acceptably 
of anything else can make a few acceptable poems about the 
beauty of the natural world. It is the only world that our fore- 
fathers knew in the days before there were cities. It is the world 
to which the psyche of mankind has been attuned by time. 

But we shall find the new spirit of new days even in the poems 
of nature. Poets of to-day do not write of the out of doors as 
their ancestors wrote of it. No contemporary poet of the first 
rank would be likely to write lines like the famous ones of Words- 
worth: 

"One impulse from a vernal wood 

May teach you more of man 
Of moral evil and of good 
Than all the sages can." 

He could not write in this way because he would not be likely 
to think and feel in this way. Certainly nature is good for us. 
Air is good to breathe and water is good to drink and the natural 
beauty of the out of doors is like the breath of life and the water 

318 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 319 

of life to the human spirit. But the poet of to-day does not think 
about nature as something external to himself, which may 
possibly have a beneficial effect on his behavior if taken in 
judicious doses. 

The poet of to-day seems to think of nature as of a matrix 
in which he himself is formed. Man is simply a part of nature, 
the summit achieved by countless climbing cells of protoplasm, 
that have perpetuated themselves in grass and coral, frog, fish, 
and feathered eagle, from generation to generation. All this 
is said far better than prose can say it in John Hall Wheelock's 
''Earth," which begins with the Unes: 

"Grasshopper, your fairy song 

And my poem alike belong 

To the dark and silent earth 

From which aU poetry has birth; 

All we say and all we sing 

Is but as the murmuring 

Of that drowsy heart of hers 

When from her deep dream she stirs: 

If we sorrow, or rejoice, 

You and I are but her voice. 

" Deftly does the dust express 
In mind her hidden loveliness, 
And from her cool silence stream 
The cricket's cry and Dante's dream: 
For the earth that breeds the trees 
Breeds cities too, and symphonies 
Equally her beauty flows 
Into a savior or a rose." 

The same thought is reiterated in "April Rain" by Conrad 
Aiken, a poem conceived in the thought of man's oneness with 
the earth, and on the interchanging of dust and dust. 

"Fall, rain! Into the dust I go with you, 
Pierce the remaining snows with subtle fire. 
Warming the frozen roots with soft desire. 
Dreams of ascending leaves and flowers new. 



32 o NEW VOICES 

" I am no longer body, — I am blood 
Seeking for some new loveliness of shape; 
Dark loveliness that dreams of new escape, 
The sun-surrender of unclosing bud." 

Thomas Hardy gives expression to the same idea with greater 
austerity, and more nobly, in his admirable poems, ''Transforma- 
tions" and ''The Wind Blew Words." 

To be sure it is no new thing in the world of thought that man 
should call the Earth his mother. Very primitive poets did that 
in the age of bronze, in the age of stone, doubtless. Later poets 
made a literary convention of the idea. But to-day it is more 
than a convention. It is truth that we can feel and understand 
better than poets of yesterday felt it and understood it. Science 
has taught us something of our kinship with the earth. In the 
best modem poems of nature a new intimacy with the earth is 
expressed. Nowadays poets do not condescend to nature. 
They do not say, in effect "' Oh yes, the Earth is our mother, 
but — " They do not speak of nature with reservations, as ex- 
clusive people speak of poor relations. They are of one substance 
with nature. They know it and are content, even glad. And 
most of the modem poets who have given us authentic poems of 
nature and the fecund earth have shared the high mood of 
William Watson's admirable "Ode In May," have thought what 
he thought when he said, 

"Magnificent out of the dust we came, 
And abject from the spheres." 

Nowadays we rejoice the more in the thought of simple, 
natural things, earth, grass, sun, rain, wind, and in the thought 
of our kinship with them, because life often carries us away from 
them all. For the modern, a return to these things of the out 
of doors, either in reality, or in poetry — the other reality — is 
relaxation and recreation and refuge from sophistication and 
unrest. In spite of starch and shoe polish, aeroplanes and 
printing presses, the primitive man still lives in us. We are his 
heirs. Sometimes he cries aloud in us for the sea or the hills, 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 321 

for the scent of pine-needles, for a draught of water from a 
spring that has never been walled in. When this happens we 
return gladly, in body and in actuality, or in spirit and in poetry, 
to claim our kinship with the kind Earth and to be soothed by 
the maternal forces of her life. 

Man's intimacy with nature is told in many modern poems. 
It is even a part of the melody of Robert Frost's lyric, ''The 
Sound of The Trees." The rhythm of moving trees is in the 
words. It is the very tune of the trees, at once irregular and 
stately. This is a proof that the poem was profoundly felt be- 
fore it was written. It could hardly have been made by the 
self-conscious intellect, the practical intellect that deals com- 
petently enough with the surfaces of things. For in the simplest 
and most impressive language, Mr. Frost reveals the very nature 
of trees in what he says about himself and reveals his own mood 
in what he says about the trees. To have written such sincere 
poetry is to have taken one little step in time to the grand march 
of the universe. It is to have been a participant in the never- 
ending pageant of the natural world and to have shared the ex- 
perience of participation with others. 

This fact, that the modern poet desires to share an experience 
in his poetry, is responsible for his way of teUing what he knows 
about the natural world. Although he is both truthful and ac- 
curate in his own way, his method is impressionistic rather than 
photographic. He does not describe in detail. He presents in 
essence. And he is always personal. His own emotion quickens 
his readers. It is what makes his poems strong to reach into 
other people's minds and hearts. We might read two or three 
pages of good description of a cherry tree, pages composed with 
pains and aiming to tell just what a cherry tree is like, and yet 
remain untouched. It is well nigh impossible to read the famous 
little lyric about the cherry tree, by A. E. Housman, dispassion- 
ately. After two or three readings it is well nigh impossible to 
forget it. That Httle poem tells us something about the cherry 
tree that we have felt ourselves. But Mr. Housman has felt 
it more keenly and expressed it better than we could express it. 



322 NEW VOICES 

"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now 
Is hung with bloom along the bough 
And stands about the woodland ride 
Wearing white for Eastertide." 

That is all that is said in description of the cherry tree. The 
other lines of the poem are lyrical, personal, naive. The beauty 
in them can belong to anyone who will take them upon his own 
lips and into his own mind. It is, moreover, a beauty so simple 
that it defies analysis. It is difficult for a critic to tell of what 
elements it is composed. 

A similar naivete is a part of the charming quality of many 
of William H. Davies' lyrics of nature. Mr. Davies does more 
than express his own love of the beautiful things out of doors. 
He is conscious of a reciprocity in friendliness and tells his 
readers about it. He is ''Nature's Friend." 

"Say what you like, 

All things love me! 
Horse, Cow, and Mouse 

Bird, Moth and Bee." 

He has something of a child's capacity for anticipation. In 
that lovable lyric, "The Rain," he says, 

"I hope the sun shines bright; 
'Twill be a lovely sight." 

and in "Leisure" he asks innocently, 

"What is this life if, full of care, 
We have no time to stand and stare. 

" No time to stand beneath the boughs 
And stare as long as sheep and cows." 

The effervescent gayety of many of his short lyrics is like the 
perennially renewed youth of the out of doors. 

The English and the Irish seem to have domesticated nature, 
if we can judge by much of their poetry about it. Mr. Davies 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 323 

is only one of many English poets who sing of a nature in which 
cows and horses and mice have a place, a nature of rose- 
bushes and trimmed hedges. It is the cultivated nature of 
lanes and gardens that Edward Thomas knows and of which 
he tells us in a number of delightful, whimsical poems. The 
following lines are typical of his quiet genius. 

"If I should ever by chance grow rich 

I'll buy Codham, Cockridden and Childerditch, 

Roses, Pyrgo, and Lap water, 

And let them all to my elder daughter. 

The rent I shall ask of her will be only 

Each year's first violets, white and lonely, 

The first primroses and orchises — 

She must find them before I do, that is." 

Padraic Colum, the Irish poet, who has lived for several 
years in the United States, has written a number of beautiful 
poems of domesticated nature which he has put into a book 
called "Wild Earth And Other Poems." The first thought that 
comes into the mind of an American who turns the pages of it 
is that Mr. Colum's "wild earth" is not very "wild." In a 
certain sense, perhaps, the earth is always wild and always will 
be. But Mr. Colum's poetry is about earth that knows the 
plough, earth on which homes have been built. The first poem 
in the book is called "The Plougher," and the second *'The 
Furrow And The Hearth." To the children of pioneers who cut 
logs in the wilderness and broke the soil of a continent for the 
first time with the plough, the word "wild" has another mean- 
ing. 

But Mr. Colum's poetry is beautiful and dignified. It is 
fraught with racial emotion. It is homely and strong. It is 
concerned with nature, to be sure, but with nature subdued 
to meet the needs of man. 

"Stride the hiU, sower, 
Up to the sky-ridge, 
Flinging the seed, 
Scattering, exultant I 



32 4 NEW VOICES 

Mouthing great rhythms 
To the long sea beats 
On the wide shore, behind 
The ridge of the hillside." 

In sharp contrast with poetry of this kind is such a lyric as 
"In The Mohave" by Patrick Orr, a poem about the Mohave 
Desert. Mr. Orr's poem, like the poems of Mr. Housman, Mr. 
Thomas, and Mr. Colum, is lyrical and impressionistic. It is the 
sharing of an experience. But because the experience is not 
gay or gentle, but poignant and cruel, the poem in which it is 
shared is astringent and of a sharp flavor. It is a poem of wild 
nature. 

"As I went down the arroyo through yuccas belled with bloom 
I saw a last year's stalk lift dried hands to the light, 

Like age at prayer for death within a careless room, 
Like one by day o'er taken whose sick desire is night." 

Mr. Orr saw that in the desert. Anyone can see it there. When 
he apostrophizes the desert, however, he reveals what he him- 
seK felt, and gives permanent form to it. 

"O cruel land, where form endures, the spirit fled.'* 

The emotional reaction which made it possible for him to utter 
that line is the suggestive force in each of his lines of description. 
It is what gives vitality to his portrayal of the brilliance and 
cruelty of the desert. 

A day may come when it will no longer be possible to write 
poems about wild nature, because nature will no longer be 
wild anywhere in the world. A day may come when so many 
people will live in so many places now uninhabited that all of 
the natural world will be domesticated. Probably poets will 
never again have a better chance than they have to-day to 
share their experiences in the wild, open world. Lovers of poetry 
can not help wishing that the poets may get the best things of 
the great out of doors made into poetry before they are made 
into picture postal cards, before the sides of the trails that go to 




GEORGE STERLING 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 325 

find them are placarded with advertisements. In America we 
have more kinds of natural beauty than any one poet can find 
time to enjoy in all his life. What a fine thing it would be if a 
few of our overheated young radicals and tepid conservatives 
could be put into communication with this natural beauty and 
helped to express it with warm natural affection! 

George Sterling, the master-singer of California, is a poet 
who has made very beautiful lyrics of nature. His pictures in 
verse have the magic of the suggested mood. He is not direct 
and naive. He says very little about his personal feehngs. But 
he shares them. He is cormnunicative in a subtle way, shyly, 
and with reserves. "The Last Days," a poem of autumn in 
Northern California, is a bit of wizardry as an interpretation 
of the season and of what it has meant to Mr. Sterling and might 
mean to anyone else. The sober rhythm and the sober phrasing 
contribute not a little to the wistful loveliness of this song of 
evanescence and change. 

"The bracken-rust is red on the hill; 

The pines stand brooding sombre and still; 

Gray are the cHffs and the waters gray, 

Where the sea-gulls dip to the sea-born spray. 

Sad November, lady of rain, 

Sends the goose-wedge over again. 



" Days departing Hnger and sigh: 
Stars come soon to the quiet sky; 
Buried voices, intimate, strange, 
Cry to body and soul of change; 
Beauty, eternal fugitive. 
Seeks the home that we can not give." 

Another good poem of the far West is "On The Great Pla- 
teau," by Edith Wyatt. It is panoramic, and its chief merit is 
that it tells the secret of the love of Westerners for the West, 
without saying anything about it. It is a secret of great spaces 
and tremendous sizes, of the highest mountains, the deepest 



32 6 NEW VOICES 

canyons, the tallest trees and the trees of greatest girth. When 
one has lived in the far West for a number of years a return to the 
smaller and more lovable landscapes of the East is Uke leaving 
a big park for a Japanese miniature garden. 

"In the Santa Clara Valley, far away and far away, 
Cool-breathed waters dip and dally, Hnger towards another day — 
Far and far away — far away." 

A poem of quite another kind is ''The Morning Song of 
Senlin" taken from a longer poem, "Senlin: A Biography" by 
Conrad Aiken. It is a lyric that sets the immensity and grandeur 
of nature side by side with our little deeds of every day, in 
sharp contrast. It is very spontaneous and original. The dew 
of surprise is still fresh on it. Everybody who is sensitive to 
contrasts between great things and small, who is capable of 
wonder in the thought of rising in the morning to a new day in 
an ancient and everlasting universe, and of setting beside the 
glory of that new day the least and most trivial of occupations, 
has felt what is said in this poem. But nobody else has put just 
this thing into poetry of this kind. ''The Morning Song of 
Senlin" is a poem for imaginative people. Practical people may 
stumble over this juxtaposition of great things and small in it. 
They are accustomed to having poets tell them that grandeur 
and immensity are near at hand. But they are not accustomed 
to having the idea put into poetry in the words of a man who is 
only standing before a mirror and tying his necktie. They 
prefer to think that the person who speaks of grandeur is perched 
upon a remote and chilly hill-top with nothing to occupy him 
but contemplation, or that he paces some romantic stage with 
his eyes rolling in fine frenzy as he talks. They are tempted to 
forget that, for nearly everybody, the perception of beauty would 
be impossible if it had to be made into a vocation. 

Mr. Aiken's poem is brave with the elation of the morning 
and it is written with enough restraint to save it from any real 
and damaging incongruities. Moreover, Mr. Aiken is a master of 
rhythm, and the cool lyrical movement of the lines of this poem 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 327 

combines in a subtle and delicate way the qualities of speech and 
song. The following Hues are especially charming: 

"The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion, 
The stars pale silently in the coral sky. 
In a whistling void I stand before my mirror, 
Unconcerned, and tie my tie. 

" There are horses neighing on far-off hills, 
Tossing their long white manes, 
And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk. 
Their shoulders black with rains . . . 
It is morning. I stand by the mirror 
And surprise my soul once more; 
The blue air rushes above my ceiling, 
There are suns beneath my floor ..." 

What has been said of the themes of nature and the open 
world as they are used in contemporary poetiy does not tell the 
whole story. The discussion would have to be very long to be 
complete. It would be necessary to tell something of the fine, 
uproarious poetry of the sea and of the sonorous, colorful poetry 
of the sea that John Masefield has written. It would be neces- 
sary to tell something of the fragrant charm of many of the poems 
about gardens that modem poets have made. It would be neces- 
sary to mention poems in which nature has stimulated the poet 
by suggesting odd, delectable magic of fancy, like Harold Mon- 
ro's "Overheard In A Saltmarsh." But that can not be done in 
an introduction. An introduction is only the beginning of a 
adventure in acquaintance. Perhaps enough has been said to 
show that those who are old friends of the open world and lovers 
of their mother. Earth, will find their filial friendship and their 
devotion adequately commemorated in the poetry of to-day. 



328 NEW VOICES 

EARTH 

Grasshopper, your fairy song 

And my poem alike belong 

To the dark and silent earth 

From which all poetry has birth; 

All we say and all we sing 

Is but as the murmuring 

Of that drowsy heart of hers 

When from her deep dream she stirs: 

If we sorrow, or rejoice, 

You and I are but her voice. 

Deftly does the dust express 
In mind her hidden loveliness, 
And from her cool silence stream 
The cricket's cry and Dante's dream: 
For the earth that breeds the trees 
Breeds cities too, and symphonies, 
Equally her beauty flows 
Into a savior, or a rose — 
Looks down in dream, and from above 
Smiles at herself in Jesus' love. 
Christ's love and Homer's art 
Are but the workings of her heart; 
Through Leonardo's hand she seeks 
Herself, and through Beethoven speaks 
In holy thunderings around 
The awful message of the ground. 

The serene and humble mould 
Does in herself all selves enfold — 
Kingdoms, destinies, and creeds, 
Great dreams and dauntless deeds, 
Science that metes the firmament, 
The high, inflexible intent 
Of one for many sacrificed — ■ 
Plato's brain, the heart of Christ: 
All love, all legend, and all lore 
Are in the dust forevermore. 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 329 

Even as the growing grass 
Up from the soil rehgions pass, 
And the field that bears the rye 
Bears parables and prophecy. 
Out of the earth the poem grows 
Like the lily, or the rose; 
And all man is, or yet may be, 
Is but herself in agony 
Toiling up the steep ascent 
Toward the complete accomplishment 
When all dust shall be, the whole 
Universe, one conscious soul. 

Yea, the quiet and cool sod 
Bears in her breast the dream of God. 
If you would know what earth is, scan 
The intricate, proud heart of man, 
Which is the earth articulate. 
And leani how holy and how great. 
How limitless and how profound 
Is the nature of the ground — 
How without terror or demur 
We may entrust ourselves to her 
When we are wearied out, and lay 
Our faces in the common clay. 

For she is pity, she is love, 

All wisdom she, all thoughts that move 

About her everlasting breast 

Till she gathers them to rest: 

All tenderness of all the ages. 

Seraphic secrets of the sages. 

All prayer, all anguish, and all tears 

Are but the dust, that from her dream 

Awakes, and knows herself supreme — 

Are but earth when she reveals 

All that her secret heart conceals 

Down in the dark and silent loam, 

Which is ourselves asleep, at home. 



330 



NEW VOICES 

Yea, and this my poem, too, 
Is part of her as dust and dew, 
Wherein herself she doth declare 
Through my Ups, and say her prayer. 

John Hall Wheelock 



"THE WIND BLEW WORDS" 

The wind blew words along the skies, 

And these it blew to me 
Through the wide dusk: "Lift up your eyes, 

Behold this troubled tree. 
Complaining as it sways and plies; 

It is a Umb of thee. 

"Yea, too, the creatures sheltering round — 

Dumb figures, wild and tame, 
Yea, too, thy fellows who abound — 

Either of speech the same 
Of far and strange — black, dwarfed, and browned, 

They are stuff of thy owti frame." 

I moved on in a surging awe 

Of inarticulateness 
At the pathetic Me I saw 

In all his huge distress, 
Making self-slaughter of the law 

To kill, bind, or suppress. 

Thomas Hardy 



TRANSFORMATIONS 

Portion of this yew 

Is a man my grandsire knew. 

Bosomed here at its foot: 

This branch may be his wife, 

A ruddy human Hfe 

Now turned to a green shoot. 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 331 

These grasses must be made 
Of her who often prayed, 
Last century, for repose; 
And the fair girl long ago 
Whom I often tried to know 
May be entering this rose. 

So, they are not underground, 
But as nerves and veins abound 
In the growths of upper air, 
And they feel the sun and rain, 
And the energy again 
That made them what they were. 

Thomas Hardy 

PENETRALIA 

I am a part of all you see 

In Nature; part of all you feel: 

I am the impact of the bee 

Upon the blossom ; in the tree 

I am the sap, — that shall reveal 

The leaf, the bloom, — that flows and flutes 

Up from the darkness through its roots. 

I am the vermeil of the rose. 

The perfume breathing in its veins; 

The gold within the mist that glows 

Along the west and overflows 

With Hght the heaven; the dew that rains 

Its freshness down and strings with spheres 

Of wet the webs and oaten ears. 

I am the egg that folds the bird; 

The song that beaks and breaks its shell; 

The laughter and the wandering word 

The water says; and, dimly heard, 

The music of the blossom's bell 

When soft winds swing it; and the sound 

Of grass slow-creeping o'er the ground. 



332 NEW VOICES 

I am the warmth, the honey-scent 
That throats with spice each Hly-bud 
That opens, white with wonderment, 
Beneath the moon; or, downward bent, 
Sleeps with a moth beneath its hood: 
I am the dream that haunts it too, 
That crystalizes into dew. 

I am the seed within the pod; 

The worm within its closed cocoon: 

The wings within the circling clod, 

The germ that gropes through soil and sod 

To beauty, radiant in the noon: 

1 am all these, behold! and more — 

I am the love at the world-heart's core. 

Madison Cawein 

THE WINDS 

Those hewers of the clouds, the Winds, — that lair 

At the four compass-points, — are out to-night; 

I hear their sandals trample on the height, 

I hear their voices trumpet through the air: 

Builders of storm, God's workmen, now they bear, 

Up the steep stair of sky, on backs of might, 

Huge tempest bulks, while, — sweat that blinds their sight, — 

The rain is shaken from tumultuous hair: 

Now, sweepers of the firmament, they broom 

Like gathered dust, the rolling mists along 

Heaven's floors of sapphire; all the beautiful blue 

Of skyey corridor and celestial room 

Preparing, with large laughter and loud song, 

For the white moon and stars to wander through. 

Madison Cawein 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 333 

THE FURROW AND THE HEARTH 

I 
Stride the hill, sower, 
Up to the sky-ridge, 
Flinging the seed, 
Scattering, exultant! 
Mouthing great rhythms 
To the long sea beats 
On the wide shore, behind 
The ridge of the hillside. 

Below in the darkness — 
The slumber of mothers — 
The cradles at rest — 
The fire-seed sleeping 
Deep in white ashes! 

Give to darkness and sleep: 
O sower, O seer! 
Give me to the Earth. 
With the seed I would enter. 
O! the growth thro' the silence 
From strength to new strength; 
Then the strong bursting forth 
Against primal forces. 
To laugh in the sunshine, 
To gladden the world! 

n 
Who will bring the red fire 
Unto a new hearth? 
Who will lay the wide stone 
On the waste of the earth? 

Who is fain to begin 
To build day by day? 
To raise up his house 
Of the moist, yellow clay? 



334 



NEW VOICES 

There's clay for the making 
Moist in the pit, 
There are horses to trample 
The rushes thro' it. 

Above where the wild duck 
Arise up and fly, 
There one may build 
To the wind and the sky. 

There are boughs in the forest 
To pluck young and green. 
O'er them thatch of the crop 
Shall be heavy and clean. 

I speak unto him 

Who in dead of the night 

Sees the red streaks 

In the ash deep and white. 

While around him he hears 
Men stir in their rest, 
And stir of the child 
That is close to the breast! 

He shall arise, 
He shall go forth alone. 
Lay stone on the earth 
And bring fire to the stone. 



DESIRE IN SPRING 



Padraic Colum 



I love the cradle songs the mothers sing 

In lonely places when the twilight drops. 

The slow endearing melodies that bring 

Sleep to the weeping lids; and, when she stops, 

I love the roadside birds upon the tops 

Of dusty hedges in a world of Spring. 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 335 

And when the sunny rain drips from the edge 
Of midday wind, and meadows lean one way, 
And a long whisper passes thro' the sedge, 
Beside the broken water let me stay, 
While these old airs upon my memory play, 
And silent changes color up the hedge. 

Francis Ledwidge 

JUNE 

Broom out the floor now, lay the fender by, 
And plant this bee-sucked bough of woodbine there, 
And let the window down. The butterfly 
Floats in upon the sunbeam, and the fair 
Tanned face of June, the nomad gipsy, laughs 
Above her widespread wares, the while she tells 
The farmers' fortunes in the fields, and quaffs 
The water from the spider-peopled wells. 

The hedges are all drowned in green grass seas, 
And bobbing poppies flare like Elmor's light. 
While siren-like the pollen-stained bees 
Drone in the clover depths. And up the height 
The cuckoo's voice is hoarse and broke with joy. 
And on the lowland crops the crows make raid, 
Nor fear the clappers of the farmer's boy 
Who sleeps, like drunken Noah, in the shade. 

And loop this red rose in that hazel ring 
That snares your little ear, for June is short 
And we must joy in it and dance and sing, 
And from her bounty draw her rosy worth. 
Ay, soon the swallows will be flying south, 
The wind wheel north to gather in the snow, 
Even the roses spilt on youth's red mouth 
Will soon blow down the road all roses go. 

Francis Ledwidge 



336 NEW VOICES 

I could not sleep for thinking of the sky, 
The unending sky, with all its million suns 
Which turn their planets everlastingly 
In nothing, where the fire-haired comet runs. 

If I could sail that nothing, I should cross 
Silence and emptiness with dark stars passing, 
Then, in the darkness, see a point of gloss 
Burn to a glow, and glare, and keep amassing. 

And rage into a sun with wandering planets 
And drop behind, and then, as I proceed. 
See his last light upon his last moon's granites 
Die to a dark that would be night indeed. 

Night where my soul might sail a million years 
In nothing, not even Death, not even tears. 

John Masefield 



A DAY FOR WANDERING 

I set apart a day for wandering; 

I heard the woodlands ring. 

The hidden white-throat sing. 

And the harmonic West, 

Beyond a far hill-crest. 

Touch its Aeolian string. 

Remote from all the brawl and bruit of men. 

The iron tongue of Trade, 

I followed the clear calling of a wren 

Deep to the bosom of a sheltered glade, 

Where interwoven branches spread a shade 

Of soft cool beryl like the evening seas 

Unrufiled by the breeze. 

And there — and there — 

I watched the maiden-hair. 

The pale blue iris-grass. 

The water-spider in its pause and pass 

Upon a pool that hke a mirror was. 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 337 

I took for confidant 

The diligent ant 

Threading the clover and the sorrel aisles; 

For me were all the smiles 

Of the sequestered blossoms there abloom — 

Chalice and crown and plume; 

I drank the ripe rich attars blurred and blent, 

And won — Content! 

Clinton Scollard 



THE SOUND OF THE TREES 

I wonder about the trees. 

Why do we wish to bear 

Forever the noise of these 

More than another noise 

So close to our dwelUng place? 

We suffer them by the day 

Till we lose all measure of pace, 

And fixity in our joys, 

And acquire a Hstening air. 

They are that that talks of going 

But never gets away; 

And that talks no less for knowing, 

As it grows wiser and older. 

That now it means to stay. 

My feet tug at the floor 

And my head sways to my shoulder 

Sometimes when I watch trees sway. 

From the window or the door. 

I shall set forth for somewhere, 

I shall make the reckless choice 

Some day when they are in voice 

And tossing so as to scare 

The white clouds over them on. 

I shall have less to say, 

But I shall be gone. 

Robert Frost 



338 NEW VOICES 

EPITAPH 

Here lies the flesh that tried 
To follow the spirit's leading; 

Fallen at last, it died, 

Broken, bruised and bleeding, 

Burned by the high fires 

Of the spirit's desires. 

It had no dream to sing 
Of ultimate Hberty; 

Fashioned for suffering. 
To endure transiently, 

And conscious that it must 

Return as dust to dust. 

It blossomed a brief hour. 
Was rosy, warm and strong; 

It went like a wilted flower, 
It ended like a song; 

Someone closed a door — 

And it was seen no more. 

The grass is very kind; 

(It knows so many dead!) 
Those whom it covers find 

Their wild hearts comforted; 
Their pulses need not meet 
The spirit's speed and heat. 

Here Hes the flesh that held 
The spirit prisoner — 

A caged thing that rebelled, 
Forced to subminister; 

Broken it had to be; 

To set its captive free. 

It is very glad to rest, 
It calls to roots and rain. 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 339 

Safe in its mother's breast, 

Ready to bloom again. 
After a day and an hour 
'Twill greet the sun a flower. 

Louise Driscoll 



NATURE'S FRIEND* 

Say what you Hke, 

All things love me! 
I pick no flowers — 

That wins the Bee. 

The Summer's Moths 

Think my hand one — ■ 
To touch their wings — • 

With Wind and Sun. 

The garden Mouse 

Comes near to play; 
Indeed, he turns 

His eyes away. 

The Wren knows weU 

I rob no nest; 
When I look in, 

She still will rest. 

The hedge stops Cows, 

Or they would come 
After my voice 

Right to my home. 

The Horse can tell, 

Straight from my lip, 
My hand could not 

Hold any whip. 

By arrangement with Mr. Davies' London publisher, A. C. Fifield. 



340 NEW VOICES 

Say what you like, 
All things love me! 

Horse, Cow, and Mouse, 
Bird, Moth and Bee. 



MOUNTAIN SONG 



William H. Davies 



I have not where to lay my head; 

Upon my breast no child shall lie; 
For me no marriage feast is spread: 

I walk alone under the sky. 

My staff and scrip I cast away — 

Light-burdened to the mountain height! 

Climbing the rocky steep by day. 
Kindling my fire against the night. 

The bitter hail shall flower the peak, 

The icy wind shall dry my tears. 
Strong shall I be, who am but weak. 

When bright Orion spears my fears. 

Under the horned moon I shall rise. 

Up swinging on the scarf of dawn. 
The sun, searching with level eyes, 

Shall take my hand and lead me on. 

Wide flaming pinions veil the West — 

Ah, shall I find? and shall I know? 
My feet are bound upon the Quest — 

Over the Great Divide I go. 

Harriet Monroe 

SANTA BARBARA BEACH 

Now while the sunset offers, , 

Shall we not take our own: 
The gems, the blazing coffers, 

The seas, the shores, the throne? 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 341 

The sky-ships, radiant-masted, 

Move out, bear low our way. 
Oh, Life was dark while it lasted, 

Now for enduring day. 

Now mth the world far under, 

To draw up drowning men 
And show them lands of wonder 

Where they may build again. 

There earthly sorrow falters, 

There longing has its wage; 
There gleam the ivory altars 

Of our lost pilgrimage. 

— Swift flame — then shipwrecks only 

Beach in the ruined light; 
Above them reach up lonely 

The headlands of the night. 

A hurt bird cries and flutters 

Her dabbled breast of brown; 
The western v/all unshutters 

To fling one last rose down. 

A rose, a wild light after — 

And Kfe calls through the years, 
"Who dreams my fountains' laughter 

Shall feed my wells with tears." 

Ridgely Torrence 

IN THE MOHAVE 

As I rode down the arroyo through yuccas belled with bloom 
I saw a last year's stalk Uft dried hands to the light, 

Like age at prayer for death within a careless room, 
Like one by day o'ertaken whose sick desire is night. 

And as I rode I saw a lean coyote lying 

All perfect as in Hfe upon a silver dune, 
Save that his feet no more could flee the harsh Hght's spying, 

Save that no more his shadow would cleave the sinking moon. 



342 NEW VOICES 

O cruel land, where form endures, the spirit fled! 

You chill the sun for me with your gray sphinx's smile. 
Brooding in the bright silence above your captive dead, 

Where beat the heart of hfe so brief, so brief a while! 

Patrick On 



THE LAST DAYS 

The russet leaves of the sycamore 

Lie at last on the valley floor — 

By the autumn wind swept to and fro 

Like ghosts in a tale of long ago. 

Shallow and clear the Carmel glides 

Where the willows droop on its vine-walled sides. 

The bracken-rust is red on the hill; 

The pines stand brooding, somber and still; 

Gray are the cliffs, and the waters gray, 

Where the seagulls dip to the sea-born spray. 

Sad November, lady of rain, 

Sends the goose-wedge over again. 

Wilder now, for the verdure's birth, 
Falls the sunlight over the earth; 
Kildees call from the fields where now 
The banding blackbirds follow the plow; 
Rustling poplar and brittle weed 
Whisper low to the river-reed. 

Days departing linger and sigh: 
Stars come soon to the quiet sky; 
Buried voices, intimate, strange, 
Cry to body and soul of change; 
Beauty, eternal, fugitive, 
Seeks the home that we cannot give. 

George Sterling 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 343 

THE BLACK VULTURE 

Aloof upon the day's immeasured dome, 

He holds unshared the silence of the sky. 

Far down his bleak, relentless eyes descry 
The eagle's empire and the falcon's home — • 
Far down, the galleons of sunset roam; 

His hazards on the sea of morning He; 

Serene, he hears the broken tempest sigh 
Where cold sierras gleam like scattered foam. 

And least of all he holds the human swarm — 
Unwitting now that envious men prepare 
To make their dream and its fulfillment one, 
When, poised above the caldrons of the storm. 
Their hearts, contemptuous of death, shall dare 
His roads between the thunder and the sun. 

George Sterling 

ON THE GREAT PLATEAU 

In the Santa Clara Valley, far away and far away. 

Cool-breathed waters dip and dally, linger towards another day — 

Far and far away — far away. 

Slow their floating step, but tireless, terraced down the great Plateau. 

Towards our ways of steam and wireless, silver-paced the brook-beds 

go. 
Past the ladder-walled Pueblos, past the orchards, pear and quince. 
Where the back-locked river's ebb flows, miles and miles the valley 

glints, 
Shining backwards, singing downwards, towards horizons blue and 

bay. 
All the roofs the roads ensconce so dream of visions far away — 
Santa Cruz and Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Santa Fe. 
Ancient, sacred fears and faiths, ancient, sacred faiths and fears — ■ 
Some were real, some were wraiths — Indian, Franciscan years. 
Built the Khivas, swimg the bells; while the wind sang plain and free, 
*'Turn your eyes from visioned hells! — look as far as you can see!" 
In the Santa Clara Valley, far away and far away, 
Dying dreams divide and dally, crystal-terraced waters sally — 
Linger towards another day, far and far away — far away. 



344 NEW VOICES 

As you follow where you find them, up along the high Plateau, 
In the hollows left behind them Spanish chapels fade below — 
Shaded court and low corrals. In the vale the goat-herd browses. 
Hollyhocks are seneschals by the little buff-walled houses. 
Over grassy swale and alley have you ever seen it so — 
Up the Santa Clara Valley, riding on the Great Plateau? 
Past the ladder-walled Pueblos, past the orchards, pear and quince, 
Where the trenched waters' ebb flows, miles and miles the valley ghnts, 
Shining backwards, singing downwards towards horizons blue and 

bay. 
All the haunts the bluffs ensconce so breathe of visions far away, 
As you ride near Ildefonso back again to Santa Fe. 
Pecos, mellow with the years, tall-waUed Taos — who can know 
Half the storied faiths and fears haunting green New Mexico? 
Only from her open places down arroyos blue and bay. 
One wild grace of many graces daUies towards another day. 
Where her yellow tufa crumbles, something stars and grasses know. 
Something true, that crowns and humbles, shimmers from the Great 

Plateau: 
Blows where cool-paced waters dally from the stillness of Puye, 
Down the Santa Clara Valley through the world from far away — 
Far and far away — far away. 

Edith Wyatt 



THE MORNING SONG OF SENLIN 

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning 

When the light drips through the shutters like the dew, 

I arise, I face the sunrise, 

And do the things my fathers learned to do. 

Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops 

Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die. 

And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet 

Stand before a glass and tie my tie. 

Vine leaves tap my window. 
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones. 
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree 
Repeating three clear tones. 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 345 

It is morning. I stand by the mirror 

And tie my tie once more. 

While waves far off in a pale rose twilight 

Crash on a white sand shore. 

I stand by a mirror and comb my hair: 

How small and white my face! — 

The green earth tilts through a sphere of air 

And bathes in a flame of space. 

There are houses hanging above the stars 

And stars hung under a sea . . . 

And a sun far off in a shell of silence 

Dapples my walls for me . . . 

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning 
Should I not pause in the Hght to remember god? 
Upright and firm I stand on a star unstable. 
He is immense and lonely as a cloud. 
I will dedicate this moment before my mirror 
To him alone, for him I will comb my hair. 
Accept these humble offerings, cloud of silence! 
I will think of you as I descend the stair. 

Vine leaves tap my window, 
The snail-track shines on the stones, 
Dew-drops flash from the chinaberry tree 
Repeating two clear tones. 

It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence, 
Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep. 
The walls are about me still as in the evening, 
I am the same, and the same name still I keep. 
The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion. 
The stars pale silently in a coral sky. 
In a whistling void I stand before my mirror, 
Unconcerned, and tie my tie. 

There are horses neighing on far-off hills 
Tossing their long white manes. 
And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk, 
Their shoulders black with rains . . . 



346 NEW VOICES 

It is morning. I stand by the mirror 
And surprise my soul once more; 
The blue air rushes above my ceiling, 
There are suns beneath my floor . . . 

... It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness 
And depart on the winds of space for I know not where, 
My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket, 
And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair. 
There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven, 
And a god among the stars; and I will go 
Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak 
And humming a tune I know . . . 

Vine-leaves tap at the window. 
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones, 
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree 
Repeating three clear tones. 

Conrad Aiken 



CANTICLE 

Devoutly worshiping the oak 
Wherein the barred owl stares. 
The little feathered forest folk 
Are praying sleepy prayers: 

Praying the summer to be long 
And drowsy to the end. 
And daily full of sun and song. 
That broken hopes may mend. 

Praying the golden age to stay 
Until the whippoorwill 
Appoints a windy moving-day, 
And hurries from the hill. 

William Griffith 



NATURE IN CONTEMPORARARY POETRY 347 

All vision fades, but splendor does not fail 
Though joy perish and all her company 
And there be nothing left of it to see. 
Splendor is in the grain. This lovely vale 
Of rock and tree and pool and sky may pale 
And fade some Autumn with its greenery, 
And its form totter, crumble utterly 
And scatter with some universal gale. 
Yet be they spread ever so wide and free 
The gale will cause the dream to come again 
The world formations out of mists will rise, 
And there will be thoughts of eternity 
And hopes the heart of man will know are vain 
And tears will come as now into the eyes. 

Samuel Roth 



PERSONALITY IN POETRY 

Poetry enables us to share many experiences, the epic desires 
and agonies of great cities, the homely triumphs and tragedies of 
field and farmhouse, the lyric pleasure of cool woods, subtle 
picturing, grave symbolism, and the zest of fluent ideas and 
emotions. In addition to all this, poetry enables us to share 
one other thing, a sense of that mysterious human inflorescence 
which we call personality. 

By virtue of his sympathetic imagination, a good poet enters 
many spiritual mansions and entertains many ghostly visitors. 
Often he knows more about us than we know about ourselves 
and about each other. For his proper study is mankind. Prac- 
tical persons must always be concerned with facts, deeds, and 
events. But the poet is chiefly interested in that impulsive 
energy which is the causation of facts, deeds and events — the 
human spirit. 

A detective, for example, may be clever enough in using his 
constructive imagination, to learn that a certain old woman has 
stolen a diamond and hidden it in her stocking. But his achieve- 
ment is small as compared with that of the poet who tells her 
story. For the poet will reconstruct her world and show it to us. 
Through his eyes we shall see her eager old face, her nervous, 
twitching fingers. Through his penetrative power we shall 
learn why she wanted the diamond. And he will cause us to 
share a definite feeling with regard to the theft — pain, disgust, 
compassion — as the case may be. This feeling will be strong 
and moving in proportion as the poet possesses the gift of char- 
acterization. 

Modern civilization, on the whole, has been favorable to the 
development of this skill. Many contemporary poets take up 
their task of presenting personality in poetry with an equip- 

348 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 349 

ment of knowledge that poets of earlier generations lacked, 
or had only by intuition. The growth of the spirit of democracy 
in the modern world has enabled many sorts of men and women 
to meet socially and for the transaction of business. We have 
travelled more than was ever possible in earlier eras. Each of 
the world's great metropolitan cities has become a small inter- 
nation, affording every facility for spiritual interchange between 
national and racial types. Whenever we read a newspaper we 
are made aware of the needs and problems of people thousands 
of miles away. We eat food which they prepare for us, and we 
ourselves prepare other foods for them. It has been shown 
that we are all interdependent to such an extent that necessarily 
any great war must involve us all. All of the world is beginning 
to know all the world as neighbor. That is how it happens that 
a poet of to-day may have a broader knowledge of mankind 
than was possible for poets of an earlier period. But that is not 
all. In addition to this breadth of vision, which may be his 
if he wiUs it, he has the means of testing and deepening his knowl- 
edge of men and women. Science has destroyed many illusions, 
but it has fostered many faiths. Biology has shown us the mar- 
vellous ascension of hfe throughout all the ages. Psychology 
is explaining man's mind, the microcosm. All of the so-called 
exact sciences have stimulated the minds and imaginations of 
progressive persons by revealing laws and forces more wonder- 
ful than any of the miracles man dreamed. Dogma, always 
the bane of poets, is giving way before the pure love of questing 
for truth which Science implants in her devotees. Through 
science, as through democracy, we are learning more about our- 
selves and about each other. By the love of truth and by the 
love of the people poets grow wise for their work of interpreta- 
tion. 

Therefore it is not strange that many contemporary poets are 
keen students of character and apt in their presentation of 
personality. Moreover, by virtue of being poets, they are able 
to make their presentation of character concise, vivid, emotional, 
and impressive in a degree not possible to most writers of prose. 



3SO NEW VOICES 

Perhaps that is why we remember poems like "The Everlasting 
Mercy," ''Dauber," ''Hoops," "A Hundred Collars," "Snow," 
and many others more readily than we remember any of the 
hundreds of short stories that we read in magazines. Short 
prose fiction must be the work of genius, like good narrative 
poetry, if we are to remember it. It seldom is. 

Gordon Bottomley is one English poet who excels in the 
presentation of personality. In his dramatic poem, ' ' King Lear's 
Wife," he gives us a totally new conception of the fabled king. 
He teaches us to sympathize with the queen, Lear's wife. This 
poem is stark, uncompromising, grim and ugly reahsm from 
beginning to end. But it is unforgettable. Each character is 
like a heroic statue rough-hewn from granite. The work has 
been cruelly done. The expressions on the stone faces are cruel. 
But we have a sense of certainty as to the truth of it. Goneril, 
who despises her sister, Regan, describes her in the following 
vigorously scornful lines: 

"Does Regan worship anywhere at dawn? 
The sweaty, half-clad cook-maids render lard 
Out in the scullery, after pig-killing, 
And Regan sidles among their greasy skirts, 
Smeary and hot as they, for craps to suck." 

It is most unlovely, of course, and so also is the conversation of 
the common women who come to bathe the dead queen and dress 
her in grave-clothes. But it is a work of genius that the reader 
can never forget. 

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson is also a reahst, but kinder. He writes 
about the people of our twentieth century world, chiefly about 
the English laboring class, men and women of the mines, the 
factories and the farms. He knows their Hfe. He interprets it 
adequately. He gives us a true sense of the oppressive weight of 
poverty upon mind and heart, of the danger and difficulty of 
manual labor, of the bitterness of undeserved defeat. But 
he gives us also a sense of the sweetness and sanity of the re- 
spectable poor and of the dignity of the soul of the people. He 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 351 

writes about plain men and women with sagacious simplicity. 
But one thing he seems to be unable to do. He can not in- 
dividualize them. We do not remember them as we remember 
Scrooge, Tiny Tim, or Mr. Pickwick. 

Mr. Gibson creates types rather than individuals. But a type, 
after all, is only a generahzation from kindred qualities in many 
individuals. And the able presentation of a type is no mean 
achievement. As types, these people in his verse belong every- 
where. The workman he describes is a real workman. The 
mothers he describes are real mothers. In his fine little dra- 
matic poem, ''On The Road," he tells the story of the ordinary 
man and the ordinary woman and the ordinary baby, all hungry 
because the ordinary man is out of a job; and all a little bit 
unhappy but very plucky. That is the whole story. But it is 
admirably told. As types, these people could hardly be better 
presented. 

Unlike Mr. Gibson, Walter de la Mare has, in his own shadowy 
way, a real genius for the presentation of individual personality. 
His poems are all combinations of twilight shades, charming 
compositions in violet, ivory and olive. But his pictures, made 
with colors that would seem to be evanescent, succeed in fixing 
themselves indelibly in our minds. Who can forget ''Miss 
Loo" when once he has been properly introduced to her in the 
poem that takes its title from her name? 

''When thin-strewn memory I look through, 

I see most clearly poor Miss Loo, 

Her tabby cat, her cage of birds, 

Her nose, her hair — her muffled words. 

And how she'd open her green eyes 

As if in some immense surprise, 

Whenever as we sat at tea 

She made some small remark to me." 

John Masefield is known the world over as the poet of the 
wanderer and the outcast, and, in his narrative poems, rough 
men and women are presented in masterly fashion. They are 



352 NEW VOICES 

individual human beings, each with his own flavor. Having 
made their acquaintance in these poems we know them as we 
know our neighbors. The widowed mother in ''The Widow In 
The Bye Street" is a tragic madonna who has won our com- 
passion and keeps it. Lord Rosas, on the other hand, in the 
poem called after him, ''Rosas," is a most romantic villain, a 
very prince of iniquities. He is weU characterized in the fol- 
lowing stanza. 

"Death was his god, his sword, his creed of power, 
Death was his pleasure, for he took delight 
To make his wife and daughter shrink and cower 
By tales of murder wreaked on Red or White, 
And while these women trembled and turned pale, 
He shrieked with laughter at the witty tale." 

But the finest work of characterization that John Masefield 
has ever done is probably to be found in his superb narrative 
poem which tells the story of "Dauber," the man who shipped 
as a sailor that he might learn the moods of the sea and how to 
paint her, the man whose drawings were destroyed by the crazy 
and futile humor of his mates, whose body was broken by an 
accident of the life he was living, but who learned from his 
rough comrades a manhood strong as their own, and finer. The 
glory of spiritual triumph, of the effort that seems to be in vain, 
is what makes this one of the finest narrative poems in our lan- 
guage. 

Contemporary American poets, also, have presented char- 
acter with the vividness and power of genius. Robert Frost 
has told us just what the men and women of rural New England 
are like. Their racial and personal qualities are all to be found 
in his poetry. Vachel Lindsay has given us the soul of the Sal- 
vation Army man on the corner, of the temperance worker of 
the Middle West with a "mussy bonnet" on her "Httle grey 
head," of soap-box orators, saints and voodoos, of the Jinn and 
of Aladdin. In particular it ought to be said of him that he has 
written a number of poems which ably characterize the negro. 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 353 

presenting many of the attractive qualities of the race and the 
vitaHty of it without the sentimentality of most American poetry 
on this theme. In his social and choral poem about King Solo- 
mon and The Queen of Sheba he shows the negro's love of for- 
mahty, music, and fine manners. In popular poetry Ruth Com- 
fort Mitchell has written a number of quaint and attractive 
poems about American people and they have been published 
together in "The Night Court and Other Verses." Her poem, 
"St. John of Nepomuc," is a fresh and gratifying revelation 
of the soul of the college freshman, as we used to know him in 
the days before the war. Mary Aldis has made many dry, sharp, 
Kttle sketches of personality, but her plays written in prose are 
better literature than her poetry. Florence Wilkinson, in " Stu- 
dents," has given us a charming picture of the life of young stu- 
dents in Paris. Robert Haven Schauffler has written a note- 
worthy poem about Washington and another called "Scum O' 
The Earth," which is an idealization of racial types. In it he 
describes the immigrant as he comes into New York harbor 
from everywhere else in the world. In each racial type Mr. 
Schauffler sees the racial genius, and in all of them, and in their 
coming, he sees the spiritual opulence of America. Louis Un- 
termeyer, who is one of the best critics of Ajnerican literature 
and a brilliant poet, has written an admirable poem about 
Moses, in which the great BibHcal hero is represented as having 
the moods and emotions of a just and righteous labor leader. 
And if we take away from ancient history the glamour of the 
antique, that is just what Moses was. 

Joyce Kilmer, whose lyrics are well known and loved, has 
written one poem which is a very delicate realization of a charm- 
ing personality. "Martin" deserves friendly consideration in 
a place by itself. It is even better and more memorable than 
Walter de la Mare's "Miss Loo," a poem of the same kind. 
Only a few persons like "Old Martin" walk up and down the 
streets of our cities wearing "an overcoat of glory," and when a 
poet meets one of them he does well to share him with us all. 

Witter Bynner's beautiful poem, "The New World," is as 



354 NEW VOICES 

much a sharing of rich and beautiful personaHty as it is a lyrical 
tale of democracy and immortality. Very happily Mr. Bynner 
tells us of CeHa, a superlatively gracious woman, and of the 
noble friendhness of her speech. 

"Among good citizens, I praise 

Again a woman whom I knew and know, 

A citizen whom I have seen 

Most heartily, most patiently 

Making God's mind, 

A citizen who, dead, 

Yet shines across her white-remembered ways 

As the nearness of a light across the snow. . . 

My Ceha, mystical, serene, 

Laughing and kind. . . 



" And O my citizen, perhaps the few 
Whom I shall tell of you 
Will see with me your beauty who are dead. 
Will hear with me your voice and what it said!" 

But in shrewd understanding of personality and as a brilliant 
analyst of character, Edwin Arlington Robinson has no superior 
among living American poets. Unlike the men who are his 
peers, Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, Mr. 
Robinson is not a poet of the people. He is rather a poet of the 
intellectuals. His humor is restrained and civil. Even his 
tragedies are urbane. He writes with a quiet distinction of man- 
ner that is sometimes annoying to all but intellectual aristo- 
crats. He must have rubbed shoulders with life and borne the 
brunt of many burdens and known life's give and take. For 
his sympathy is exquisite. He must have been familiar with 
many tragedies, for he has a rare understanding of a few. But 
his poetry, as poetry, is far from the common earth and from 
the feeling of the folk. With unerring precision he defines the 
complex and sophisticated personality. And, even if we are 
unwilHng to call him a great poet, we must, nevertheless, admit 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 355 

that he is an exceedingly brilliant poet, with a sure sense of 
personal values, a rare power of discrimination between this and 
that, and the essential nobleness of gesture which is part of 
being a gentleman. His poems are somewhat like the fine draw- 
ings in India ink made by a skilled draughtsman, looking through 
a microscope in a biological laboratory. They are just as ac- 
curate as such drawings. 

Mr. Robinson's sharp-edged intellectuality and his astringent 
humor are at their best in his drolly pathetic little poem about 
"Miniver Cheevy" (O masterly nomenclature!) who loved the 
Medici — 

" Albeit he had never seen one; 
He would have sinned incessantly 
Could he have been one." 

It would be well nigh impossible to forget a man who 

"missed the mediaeval grace 
Of iron clothing." 

Perhaps nobody has made a more vivid picture of the man who 
is a romantic misfit in his own times and environment. 

Just as true to human experience, and much more tragic in its 
implications, is that acrid poem, "Richard Cory." Richard Cory 
was a gentleman whom common people envied. He was " Clean- 
favored and imperially slim." He "fluttered pulses" when he 
said "Good morning." He "gUttered" when he walked. But 
it was Richard Cory, not the common people who envied him, 
who could not live life through faithfully to the end. 

In both of these poems by Mr. Robinson even a new reader of 
contemporary poetry can recognize an impeccable technique. 
The spare and austere use of words in exactly the right places, 
the accuracy and strength of the words, always in keeping with 
meaning and mood and with the sober rhytlnns, is nothing short 
of masterly. It is well to notice, also, that this is technique of 
the modern kind. Mr. Robinson does not explain the suicide 
of Richard Cory. He does not moralize about it, although the 



356 NEW VOICES 

reader is free to draw a moral from this study if he wishes to 
think about it in that way and for that purpose. Mr. Robinson 
enables us to share the personality of this Richard Cory and the 
shock of the news of his suicide, that is all. The story is told 
and the poem stops. But he does focus our attention on what 
people thought of Richard Cory and upon what the man really 
was. He shows clearly that he was externally and materially 
rich, inwardly and spiritually poor. 

Even more interesting and more subtle is the poem called 
*'Flammonde." It is about a man who lived easily in *'the 
grand style," on credit. The effect upon the reader's conscious- 
ness is less harsh than the effect of ''Richard Cory." It is a 
gentler poem than either of the two already quoted. How much 
is said of the man "Flammonde" in the following lines! 

"His cleansing heritage of taste 
Paraded neither want nor waste; 
And what he needed for his fee 
To livej he borrowed graciously. 



" Moreover, many a malcontent 
He soothed and found munificent; 
His courtesy beguiled and foiled 
Suspicion that his years were soiled; 
His mien distinguished any crowd, 
His credit strengthened when he bowed; 
And women, young and old, were fond 
Of looking at the man Flammonde." 

With this same expertness of thought and technique Mr. 
Robinson has written many other poems. The least valuable 
and successful is " Merlin," a retelling of part of the Arthurian 
legend. It is unsuccessful because Mr. Robinson has not the 
temperament for that task. He can think back into the period 
when men believed in wizardry, but he can not feel the period 
and vitalize it. His study of Lincoln should be read in all 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 357 

schools for it is a fine interpretation of the great President. 
In it we are permitted to share the acute loneHness of those who 
bear the weight of responsibiUty for the Kves of nations. But 
keen and original as it is, this poem about Lincoln is not Mr. 
Robinson's best poem. His masterpiece is a characterization 
of Shakespeare, probably the best that has ever been made. 
It is a brilliant feat in constructive imagining, and is called 
^'Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford." Voltaire 
once said that if there were no God it would be necessary for 
man to invent one. If there were no Shakespeare, surely all 
persons of Enghsh speech would demand that a Shakespeare be 
invented. Mr. Robinson has created a Shakespeare, a poet's 
Shakespeare. 

Our other American master of the art of characterization is 
Edgar Lee Masters. For years he has been storing up impres- 
sions of American life as he has found it in big cities, in small 
towns, in the country. He has been a lawyer, working among 
the people, aware of their secret sympathies, vulgarities, de- 
pravities, heroisms and kindnesses. A great river is the only 
adequate symbol for the genius of Mr. Masters. 

Let us imagine a river whose waters come from many sources, 
over shale and limestone and granite gravel, through forests of 
maple and birch and cedar and pine. Let us imagine that bright 
quartz pebbles and fine dust, maple keys, gay flowers, and frisky 
insects have fallen into it. Let us suppose that it passes cities 
and towns, also, where all manner of rubbish has been cast into 
it, all that has been sour, broken, and dirty. And let us imagine 
that below the forests and below the towers a great dam was 
built, so that the river might not find an outlet and flow peace- 
ably to the sea, but was forced to rise slowly against the dam, 
holding all things together in its depths, and never, for a long 
time, able to pour itself over the top. Then at last came a pro- 
digious freshet, or some other climax that swelled the flood of 
the waters. And they broke the dam, and with tremendous 
roaring pounded their way through to the ocean, carrying with 
them what they had held in the depths. . . . 



358 NEW VOICES 

Life has cast in upon the consciousness of Mr. Masters many 
things as gay as maple keys and wild flowers, many other things 
as sour and sordid as the refuse of the villages. And yet, for 
many years, he, who was destined to become a master-maker 
of American literature, gave us no account of any of these things. 
Perhaps he lacked the artistic idea, the medium of craftsman- 
ship. Or perhaps the conscious intellect, well trained in the 
profession of law, did not sufficiently relax in the vigilance which 
guards, and sometimes restrains the un-self-conscious, quickly 
working, intuitive and creative intellect of the poet. 

However this may be, it was not until the publication of ''The 
Spoon River Anthology" in 1914-1915, that the silence of in- 
effectual expression was broken for Mr. Masters, as a dam 
might be broken by the weight of a river. An overflow of poetic 
narrative was let loose upon the world. And from that time to 
this the fame of "Spoon River" has been growing. It has gone 
out of IlUnois, across the continent, around the world. And when 
his other books have been forgotten, it is more than likely that 
this collection of terse epitaphs will be remembered. 

''The Spoon River Anthology" has been called the greatest 
American book since the days of Columbus and it has been 
called the "apotheosis of village gossip." It is very much to be 
doubted whether any one book can rightly be called "the great- 
est." Any such decision made in this generation would be pre- 
mature, to say the least. It is wisest to leave the bestowal of 
superlatives to Time. Nor is this a book of gossip. For gossip 
is external to the persons discussed. And the ladies of Spoon 
River, who would have taken dehght in the knowledge that 
Deacon Taylor drank "spiritus frumenti" daily, could never 
have guessed the spiritual realities told in this book. 

But one thing the book assuredly is, on every page and in 
every line. It is interesting. Life is rank and rich in it. The 
acrid odor of weeds matted down and crushed mingles with 
the fragrance of flowers, as a rule overcoming the fragrance. 
But the flowers are there too, growing among the weeds, as they 
do in the open field, in the open world, not segregated and pro- 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 359 

tected as they would be in hot houses. And they would be per- 
sons of "queasy stomach," as Stevenson says, who, having be- 
gun to read this book, would not go on to the end. 

We should not be too quick to condemn the ugliness in this 
book. We must not be cowardly before any virile presentation of 
American life in all its weird chiaroscuro of ugliness and beauty, 
in its clashing battle of the forces of body and soul. How can 
we heal the diseases of civilization if we are unwilling to dis- 
cover them? Readers who are disgusted with the hypocrisies 
of Editor Whedon, the weaknesses of Doctor Meyers, the bru- 
talities of "Butch" Weldy, the matrimonial adventures of 
Dora Williams, the extra-matrimonial adventures of less pru- 
dent ladies, the murders, suicides and revolting animalism of 
many of these people, may well be disgusted with the things 
themselves — but why be disgusted with the book? Is it not 
a mistake to demand that all stories be pretty and pleasant? 
The reader may well ask himself whether these things happen in 
this way in his own home town, and what is to be done about it, 
before he turns away from this book. Such works of realism 
are like statements of symptoms leading to a diagnosis. It is 
for the public to find the cure. 

But it would be most unfair to Mr. Masters to give the im- 
pression that all of his characters are coarse, mean, cruel; that 
all of the realism of the book is sordid and squalid. At least 
twenty-five of these neighbors living near Spoon River and de- 
scribed in the famous Anthology, must have lived happy lives, 
full of hearty labor, honest affections, intellectual growth and 
spiritual aspiration. And Mr. Masters is as just and accurate 
in his analysis of personality in men and women of the kind we 
call "good" as in the people of the kind we call "bad." His 
good people are very real and no two of them are aUke. Lu- 
cinda Matlock is a woman venerable and epic. She is the 
ample and generous peasant woman, the strength of the race 
from generation to generation, simple and maternal, a constant 
lover, rejoicing in the hills and valleys. Lydia Humphrey is 
a little gray spinster for whom the village church is "the vision, 



360 NEW VOICES 

vision, vision of the poets democratized." Anne Rutledge is 
the ''beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln." She says, 

"Bloom forever, O Republic, 
From the dust of my bosom!" 

Sometimes in poems like these the power of beautiful thought 
and fine emotion seizes upon the poet and compels him to create 
that which is not "less than verse" and which is, indeed, more 
than prose — pure poetry. This happens in the story of Isaiah 
Beethoven, who was taken down to the river to watch it in the 
days when he was waiting for death. Just before the end he 
says: 

"The soul of the river had entered my soul, 
And the gathered power of my soul was moving 
So swiftly it seemed to be at rest 
Under cities of cloud and under 
Spheres of silver and changing worlds — 
Until I saw a flash of trumpets 
Above the battlements over Time." 

Over and above the great qualities of human interest and ex- 
cellent characterization, the "Spoon River Anthology" has the 
quality of marvellous conciseness. In it we find an epic in a 
page, a ballad in a paragraph, a lyric in a single line, over and 
over again. 

"Toward The Gulf," Mr. Masters' latest book, contains the 
best work that he has done since he became famous. It is a 
book worthy of consideration, a book for thinkers. But it is 
not likely to prove popular. Most of the poems in it lack the 
clarity, simplicity and brevity of the "Spoon River" narratives. 
Many lines are turgid with thought. Moreover, Mr. Masters 
is preoccupied with questions of sex, heredity, disease and ab- 
normal psychology that can only be understood by persons hav- 
ing a considerable knowledge of modern science. These poems 
wiU be obscure and valueless and even quite unpoetic for many 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 361 

people. They are very long. They are intellectual narratives 
of intellectual events. All of this applies to a large part of what 
is in the book. 

But there are a few excellent things in "Toward The Gulf." 
No one who enjoys contemporary poetry and who has found 
pleasure in other work by Mr. Masters should miss the odd 
whimsy of the character, Hosea Job, in the poem called " Sir 
Galahad." Hosea Job is deHghtful, inimitable. And in this 
poem is an exceedingly vivid bit of description. 

"Great hills that stood together like the backs 

Of elephants in a herd, where boulders lay 

As thick as hail in places. Ruined pines 

Stood like burnt matches. There was one which stuck 

Against a single cloud so white it seemed 

A bursted bale of cotton." 

Nor should anyone miss the quaint and lovable legend of 
Johnny Appleseed, who went west ahead of the pioneers, 
planting apple trees, "For children to come who will gather and 
eat hereafter." 

"And it's every bit the truth, said Peter Van Zylen. 
So many things love an apple as well as ourselves. 
A man must fight for the thing he loves, to possess it : 
Apples, freedom, heaven, said Peter Van Zylen." 



It is a strange fact that we can sometimes learn more about 
an imagined and fictional personality by reading a poem like 
"Lucinda Matlock," "Martin," "Miss Loo," or "Flammonde" 
than we can learn about a real person by daily meetings and 
associations. And it is not only possible to learn much about 
mankind in the poems of skilled poets, but it is possible, also, 
to feel, through the poet, a sympathy with persons whom we 
should recognize only as aliens in our actual experience. Men 
and women who might repel us if we met them face to face, can 
be quietly understood in a poem. In this way our sympathies 



362 NEW VOICES 

are extended and ennobled. Life is made friendly and fra- 
ternal. 

It is good to reach out into the lives of the poor through Mr. 
Gibson, into the lives of sailors and outcasts through Mr. Mase- 
field, into the lives of quaint and charming persons through Mr. 
Kihner and Mr. de la Mare, into the lives of unique persons 
through Mr. Robinson. And it is very good indeed to share the 
emotions of the newly arrived Itahan immigrant with that gentle 
poet Thomas Augustine Daly. Who that has read it will ever 
forget that tenderly beautiful lyric, ''Da Leetla Boy" ? 

MARTIN 

"When I am tired of earnest men, 

Intense and keen and sharp and clever, 
Pursuing fame with brush or pen 

Or counting metal disks forever, 
Then from the halls of shadowland 

Beyond the trackless purple sea 
Old Martin's ghost comes back to stand 

Beside my desk and talk to me. 

Still on his delicate pale face 

A quizzical thin smile is showing, 
His cheeks are wrinkled like fine lace. 

His kind blue eyes are gay and glowing. 
He wears a brilliant-hued cravat, 

A suit to match his soft gray hair, 
A rakish stick, a knowing hat, 

A manner blithe and debonair. 

How good, that he who always knew 

That being lovely was a duty. 
Should have gold halls to wander through 

And should himself inhabit beauty. 
How like his old unselfish way 

To leave those halls of splendid mirth 
And comfort those condemned to stay 

Upon the bleak and sombre earth. 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 363 

Some people ask: What cruel chance 

Made Martin's life so sad a story? 
Martin? Why, he exhaled romance 

And wore an overcoat of glory. 
A fleck of sunlight in the street, 

A horse, a book, a girl who smiled, — 
Such visions made each moment sweet 

For this receptive, ancient child. 

Because it was old Martin's lot 

To be, not make, a decoration, 
Shall we then scorn him, having not 

His genius of appreciation? 
Rich joy and love he got and gave; 

His heart was merry as his dress. 
Pile laurel wreaths upon his grave 

Who did not gain, but was, success. 

Joyce Kilmer 



MISS LOO 

When thin-strewn memory I look through, 

I see most clearly poor Miss Loo, 

Her tabby cat, her cage of birds, 

Her nose, her hair — her muffied words, 

And how she'd open her green eyes. 

As if in some immense surprise, 

Whenever as we sat at tea 

She made some small remark to me. 

It's always drowsy summer when 

From out the past she comes again; 

The westering sunshine in a pool 

Floats in her parlor still and cool; 

While the sKm bird its lean wire shakes, 

As into piercing song it breaks; 

Till Peter's pale-green eyes ajar 

Dream, wake; wake, dream, in one brief bar. 



364 NEW VOICES 

And I am sitting, dull and shy, 
And she with gaze of vacancy, 
And large hands folded on the tray, 
Musing the afternoon away; 
Her satin bosom heaving slow 
With sighs that softly ebb and flow. 
And her plain face in such dismay. 
It seems unkind to look her way: 
Until all cheerful back will come 
Her cheerful gleaming spirit home: 
And one would think that poor Miss Loo 
Asked nothing else, if she had you. 

Walter dc la Mare 



AN OLD MAN'S WINTER NIGHT 

All out of doors looked darkly in at him 

Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars. 

That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. 

What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze 

Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. 

What kept him from remembering what it was 

That brought him to that creaking room was age. 

He stood with barrels round him — at a loss. 

And having scared the cellar under him 

In clomping there, he scared it once again 

In clomping off; — and scared the outer night. 

Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar 

Of trees and crack of branches, common things. 

But nothing so Hke beating on a box. 

A light he was to no one but himself 

Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what, 

A quiet light, and then not even that. 

He consigned to the moon, such as she was, 

So late-arising, to the broken moon 

As better than the sun in any case 

For such a charge, his snow upon the roof. 

His icicles along the wall to keep; 

And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 365 

Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted, 
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept. 
One aged man — one man — can't keep a house, 
A farm, a countryside, or if he can. 
It's thus he does it of a winter night. 

Robert Frost 



RICHARD CORY* 

Whenever Richard Cory went down town, 
We people on the pavement looked at him: 

He was a gentleman from sol^ to crown, 
Clean favored, and imperially slim. 

And he was always quietly arrayed, 

And he was always human when he talked; 

But still he fluttered pulses when he said, 

" Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked. 

And he was rich — yes, richer than a king. 

And admirably schooled in every grace: 
In fine, we thought that he was everything 

To make us wish that we were in his place. 

So on we worked, and waited for the light, 

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; 

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, 
Went home and put a bullet through his head. 

Edwin Arlington Robinson 



MINIVER CHEEVYf 

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn. 

Grew lean while he assailed the seasons; 

He wept that he was ever born. 
And he had reasons. 

* "Richard Cory" by permission from The Children of the Night, published by Charles 
Scribner's Sons; copyright, 1896 and 1897 by Edwin Arlington Robinson. 

t " Miniver Cheevy " is reproduced by permission from The Town Down the River, published 
by Charles Scribner's Sons; copyright, 1910, by Charles Scribner's Sons. 



366 NEW VOICES 

Miniver loved the days of old 

When swords were bright and steeds were prancing; 
The vision of a warrior bold 

Would set him dancing. 

Miniver sighed for what was not, 

And dreamed, and rested from his labors; 

He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot, 
And Priam's neighbors. 

Miniver mourned the ripe renown 

That made so many a name so fragrant; 

He mourned Romance, now on the town, 
And Art, a vagrant. 

Miniver loved the Medici, 

Albeit he had never seen one; ' ') 

He would have sinned incessantly 

Could he have been one. 

Miniver cursed the commonplace 

And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; 
He missed the mediaeval grace 

Of iron clothing. 

Miniver scorned the gold he sought, 

But sore annoyed was he without it; 
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought, 

And thought about it. 

Miniver Cheevy, born too late, 

Scratched his head and kept on thinking; 

Miniver coughed, and called it fate. 
And kept on drinking. 

Edwin Arlington Robinson 



FLAMMONDE 

The man Flammonde, from God knows where. 
With firm address and foreign air. 
With news of nations in his talk 
And something royal in his walk, 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 367 

With glint of iron in his eyes, 
But never doubt, nor yet surprise, 
Appeared, and stayed, and held his head 
As one by kings accredited. 

Erect, with his alert repose 
About him, and about his clothes, 
He pictured all tradition hears 
Of what we owe to fifty years. 
His cleansing heritage of taste 
Paraded neither want nor waste; 
And what he needed for his fee 
To Hve, he borrowed graciously. 

He never told us what he was, 
Or what mischance, or other cause, 
Had banished him from better days 
To play the Prince of Castaways. 
Meanwhile he played surpassing well 
A part, for most, unplayable; 
In fine, one pauses, half afraid 
To say for certain that he played. 

For that, one may as well forego 
Conviction as to yes or no; 
Nor can I say just how intense 
, Would then have been the difference 
To several, who, having striven 
In vain to get what he was given. 
Would see the stranger taken on 
By friends not easy to be won. 

Moreover, many a malcontent 
He soothed and found munificent; 
His courtesy beguiled and foiled 
Suspicion that his years were soiled; 
His mien distinguished any crowd, 
His credit strengthened when he bowed; 
And women, young and old, were fond 
Of looking at the man Flammonde. 



368 NEW VOICES 

There was a woman in our town 
On whom the fashion was to frown; 
But while our talk renewed the tinge 
Of a long-faded scarlet fringe, 
The man Flammonde saw none of that, 
But what he saw we wondered at — 
That none of us, in her distress 
Could hide or find our littleness. 

There was a boy that all agreed 

Had shut within him the rare seed 

Of learning. We could understand. 

But none of us could lift a hand. 

The man Flammonde appraised the youth, 

And told a few of us the truth; 

And thereby, for a little gold, 

A flowered future was unrolled. 

There were two citizens who fought 
For years and years, and over nought; 
They made life awkward for their friends, 
And shortened their own dividends. 
The man Flammonde said what was wrong 
Should be made right; nor was it long 
Before they were again in Hne, 
And had each other in to dine. 

And these I mention are but four 
Of many out of many more. 
So much for them. But what of him — 
So firm in every look and limb? 
What small satanic sort of kink 
Was in his brain? What broken Hnk 
Withheld him from the destinies 
That came so near to being his? 

What was he, when we came to sift 
His meaning, and to note the drift 
Of incommunicable ways 
That make us ponder while we praise? 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 369 

Why was it that his chami revealed 
Somehow the surface of a shield? 
What was it that we never caught? 
What was he, and what was he not? 

How much it was of him we met 
We cannot ever know; nor yet 
Shall all he gave us quite atone 
For what was his, and his alone; 
Nor need we now, since he knew best, 
Nourish an ethical unrest: 
Rarely at once will nature give 
The power to be Flammonde and live. 

We cannot know how much we learn 
From those who never will return, 
Until a flash of unforeseen 
Remembrance falls on what has been. 
We've each a darkening hill to climb; 
And this is why, from time to time 
In Tilbury Town, we look beyond 
Horizons for the man Flammonde. 

Edwin Arlington Robinson 



THE BIRD AND THE TREE 

Blackbird, blackbird in the cage. 
There's something wrong to-night. 
Far off the sheriff's footfall dies, 
The minutes crawl Hke last year's flies 
Between the bars, and like an age 
The hours are long to-night. 

The sky is Hke a heavy lid 

Out here beyond the door to-night. 

What's that? A mutter down the street. 

What's that? The sound of yells and feet. 

For what you didn't do or did 

You'll pay the score to-night. 



370 NEW VOICES 

No use to reek with reddened sweat, 

No use to whimper and to sweat. 

They've got the rope; they've got the guns, 

They've got the courage and the guns; 

An that's the reason why to-night 

No use to ask them any more. 

They'll fire the answer through the door — 

You're out to die to-night. 

There where the lonely cross-road lies, 
There is no place to make rephes; 
But silence, inch by inch, is there, 
And the right Hmb for a lynch is there; 
And a lean daw waits for both your eyes, 
Blackbird. 

Perhaps you'll meet again some place. 
Look for the mask upon the face; 
That's the way you'll know them there — 
A white mask to hide the face. 
And you can halt and show them there 
The things that they are deaf to now, 
And they can tell you what they meant — 
To wash the blood with blood. But how 
If you are innocent? 

Blackbird singer, blackbird mute. 

They choked the seed you might have found. 

Out of a thorny field you go — 

For you it may be better so — 

And leave the sowers of the ground 

To eat the harvest of the fruit, 

Blackbird. 

Ridgely Torrence 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 371 

MERCHANTS FROM CATHAY 

Their heels slapped their bumping mules; their fat How that They 

1 t , came 

chaps glowed. 
Glory unto Mary, each seemed to wear a crown! 
Like sunset their robes were on the wide, white road: 
So we saw those mad merchants come dusting into 

town! 

Two paunchy beasts they rode on and two they drove Of their Beasts, 
before. 
May the Saints all help us, the tiger-stripes they 
had! 
And the panniers upon them swelled full of stuffs and 
ore! 
The square buzzed and jostled at a sight so mad. 

They bawled in their beards, and their turbans they And their Boast, 
wried. 
They stopped by the stalls with curvetting and 
clatter. 
As bronze as the bracken their necks and faces 
dyed — 
And a stave they sat singing, to tell us of the 
matter. 

"For your silks , to Sugarmago! For your dyes, to With its Burthen 
Isfahan! 
Weird fruits from the Isle d* Lamaree! 
But for magic merchandise^ 
For treasure-trove and spice, 
Here^s a catch atid a carol to the great, grand Chan, 
The King of all the Kings across the sea! 

"Here's a catch and a carol to the great, grand Chan: And Chorus. 
For we won through the deserts to his sunset barbican^ 
And the mountains of his palace no Titan's reach may 
span 
Where he wields his seignorie! 



372 



NEW VOICES 



A first Stave Fear- 
some, 



" Red-as-blood skins of Panthers, so bright against the 
sun 
On the walls of the halls where his pillared state is 
set 
They daze with a blaze no man may look upon ! 
And with conduits of beverage those floors run wet! 



And a second Right 
hard To stomach 



''His wives stiff with riches, they sit before him there. 

Bird and beast at his feast make song and clapping 

cheer. 

And jugglers and enchanters, all walking on the air, 

Make fall eclipse and thunder — make moons and 

suns appear! 



And a third Which 
is a Laughable 
Thing 



*' Once the Chan, by his enemies sore-prest, and sorely 
spent. 
Lay, so they say, in a thicket 'neath a tree 
Where the howl of an owl vexed his foes from their 
intent : 
Then that fowl for a holy bird of reverence made he! 



Of the Chan's 
Hunting. 



"And when he will a-hunting go, four elephants of 
white 

Draw his wheeling dais of lignum aloes made; 
And marquises and admirals and barons of delight 

All courier his chariot, in orfrayes arrayed! 



We gape to Hear 
them end 



"v4 catch and a carol to the great, grand Chan! 
Pastmasters of disasters, our desert caravan 
Won through all peril to his sunset barbican, 

Where he wields his seignorie! 
And crowns he gave us! We end where we began, 
A catch and a carol to the great, grand Chan, 
The King of all the Kings across the sea!" 



And are in Terror, Thosc mad, antic Merchants! . . . Their striped 
beasts did beat 
The market-square suddenly with hooves of beaten 
gold! 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 373 

The ground yawned gaping and flamed beneath our 
feet! 
They plunged to Pits Abysmal with their wealth 
untold ! 

And some say the Chan himself in anger dealt the And dread it is 

^ , ■' '^ Devil's Work! 

stroke — 
For sharing of his secrets with silly, common folk: 
But Holy, Blessed Mary, preserve us as you may 
Lest once more those mad Merchants come chanting 

from Cathay! 

William Rose Benet 



ISAIAH BEETHOVEN 

They told me I had three months to h've, 

So I crept to Bernadotte, 

And sat by the mill for hours and hours 

Where the gathered waters deeply moving 

Seemed not to move: 

O world, that's you! 

You are but a widened place in the river 

Where Life looks down and we rejoice for her 

Mirrored in us, and so we dream 

And turn away, but when again 

We look for the face, behold the low-lands 

And blasted cotton-wood trees where we empty 

Into the larger stream! 

But here by the mill the castled clouds 

Mocked themselves in the dizzy water; 

And over its agate floor at night 

The flame of the moon ran under my eyes 

Amid a forest stillness broken 

By a flute in a hut on the hill. 

At last when I came to He in bed 

Weak and in pain, with the dreams about me, 

The soul of the river had entered my soul, 

And the gathered power of my soul was moving 

So swiftly it seemed to be at rest 



374 NEW VOICES 

Under cities of cloud and under 
Spheres of silver and changing worlds — 
Until I saw a flash of trumpets 
Above the battlements over Time! 

Edgar Lee Masters 

ANNE RUTLEDGE 

Out of me unworthy and unknown 

The vibrations of deathless music; 

"With malice toward none, with charity for all." 

Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions, 

And the beneficent face of a nation 

Shining with justice and truth. 

I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, 

Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln, 

Wedded to him, not through union, 

But through separation. 

Bloom forever, O Republic, 

From the dust of my bosom! 

Edgar Lee Masters 

LUCINDA MATLOCK 

I went to the dances at Chandlerville, 

And played snap-out at Winchester. 

One time we changed partners, 

Driving home in the moonlight of middle June, 

And then I found Davis. 

We were married and lived together for seventy years. 

Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children, 

Eight of whom we lost 

Ere I had reached the age of sixty. 

I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick, 

I made the garden, and for holiday 

Rambled over the fields where sang the larks. 

And by Spoon River gathering many a shell, 

And many a flower and medicinal weed — ■ 

Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys. 

At ninety-six I had lived enough, that i-s all, 



PERSONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY POETRY 375 

And passed to a sweet repose. 

What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, 

Anger, discontent and drooping hopes? 

Degenerate sons and daughters, 

Life is too strong for you — 

It takes life to love Life. 

Edgar Lee Masters 



DA LEETLA BOY* 

Da spreeng ees com' ! but oh, da joy 

Eet ees too late! 
He was so cold, my leetla boy, 

He no could wait. 

I no can count how manny week, 
How manny day, dat he ees seeck; 
How manny night I seet an' hold 
Da leetla hand dat was so cold. 
He was so patience, oh, so sweet! 
Eet hurts my throat for theenk of eet; 
An' all he evra ask ees w'en 
Ees gona com' da spreeng agen. 
Wan day, wan brighta sunny day, 
He see, across da alleyway. 
Da leetla girl dat's livin' dere 
Ees raise her window for da air, 
An' put outside a leetla pot 
Of — w'at-you-call? — forgat-me-not. 
So smalla flower, so leetla theeng! 
But steel eet mak' hees hearta seeng: 
"Oh, now, at las', ees com' da spreeng! 
Da leetla plant ees glad for know 
Da sun ees com' for mak ' eet grow. 
So, too, I am grow warm and strong." 
So lika dat he seeng hees song. 
But, Ah! da night com' down an' den 
Da weenter ees sneak back agen. 

From Carmim by T. A. Daly. Copyright, 1909, by Joha Lane Company. 



376 NEW VOICES 

An' een da alley all da night 

Ees fall da snow, so cold, so white, 

An' cover up da leetla pot 

Of — wa't-you-call? — forgat-me-not. 

All night da leetla hand I hold 

Eees grow so cold, so cold, so cold! 

Da spreeng ees com'; but oh, da joy 

Eet ees too late! 
He was so cold, my leetla boy, 

He no could wait. 

Thomas Augustine Daly 



CHILDREN AND POETRY 

To those who believe that children and poetry are the loveHest 
things in the world it seems natural that they should belong to- 
gether. Yet we are often told that children do not Hke poetry. 
The truth of the matter probably is that they do not like what is 
frequently offered to them under the name of poetry, or that 
they do not like the way poetry is offered. For this they are not 
to blame. For, if we stop to consider the nature of children, and 
the things which they thoroughly enjoy, we shall reahze that 
very often children are not interested in poetry because we 
have made interest in it impossible io)c them. 

We do not need to be psychologists to know what things give 
children pleasure. We have all been children. We have all 
watched children at play. Unless we are just seventeen years 
old and have forgotten what childhood is like, we know that 
children love play better than anything else. They love vigorous 
physical play — tag, hide-an-seek, pom-pom-pull-away, pussy- 
in-the-corner. And they love imaginative play, the perennially 
interesting games of ''school," "house," ''pirates," "hospital," 
and "dress-up-and-pretend." And before any game is begun 
they have a little ritual of choice which they call "counting out" 
and which determines who shall be the leader or that mysterious 
person called "it." 

Now in all of these activities children are very close to poetry. 
Tag is a very primitive game and seldom played for long at a 
time. It is a game to play on your way home from school, not a 
game for a whole Saturday morning. But the more elaborate 
"running games" are often accompanied, as we know, by little 
"singsong" calls that might be called "refrains" if we wanted 
to be solemn about it. In playing "pom-pom" one side taunts 
the other, from time to time, with this little bit of rhythmical 
speech. 

377 



378 NEW VOICES 

"Pom, pom, pull away, 
'F you don't come out 
We'll pull you 'way." 

In still more elaborate games children use verses set to tunes 
that are probably many generations old, and these verses are 
said or sung with dances or marches, usually as the accom- 
paniment of a story. In the game called "Drop The Hand- 
kerchief," or ''Itiskit, Itaskit," the leader walks around a circle 
of children chanting the famous httle song: 

"Itiskit, Itaskit, 
A green and yellow basket, 
I wrote a letter to my love 
And on the way I dropped it, 
I dropped it, dropped it," 

And this goes on until the singer does drop the handkerchief 
behind another child who must pick it up and catch the leader 
before he runs around the circle. In ''Oats, peas, beans" the 
children tell the story of the farmer arid how he goes to house- 
keeping, and they imitate him when he 

"Stamps his foot, 
And claps his hands. 
And turns around 
To view his lands." 

In all games which are a part of our folklore are all the ele- 
ments of poetry; story, dramatization, lyrical expression, 
rhythm, strongly and effectively stressed, and rhyme. And chil- 
dren learn these games almost as soon as they begin to play 
with other children and repeat them again and again, apparently 
with great pleasure. By their repetition of the cadences again 
and again they show their love of strong rhythms. By their 
enjoyment of the story, the imitative action, or the dramatic 
suggestion, they show their love of imaginative activity. In 
their games, then, we must admit that children enjoy, in a primi- 
tive form, the beginnings of poetry. But we shall be wise if we 



CHILDREN AND POETRY 379 

remember that they enjoy taking part in poetry. They Hke to 
act the story, or dance to the rhythm, or chant or sing it. 

In their "counting out" rhymes, children show more than the 
love of story and rhyme and rhythm. They show a very decided 
interest in the flavors and sounds of words. Take one of the 
best known rhymes, which has variants in all parts of this coun- 
try, and, for all that I know, in all parts of the EngHsh speaking 
world: 

"Onery, ewery, ickery, Anne 
Filasy, folasy, Nicholas, John, 
Squeeby, squawby, Irish Mary, 
Stickerum, stackerum, buck — you're it!" 

and notice the sound echoes — ^liow one word passes on part of 
its sound, but not the whole of it, to the next one. And 
notice also the delicious comedy of the combination "Squeeby, 
squawby." We do not know what they mean, but if we have 
any sense of humor, we know that they are funny words. This 
same power to play with words, when used for beauty and not for 
amusement, produces some of the finest lines of poetry that the 
language can boast. 

When children play games in the house on rainy days, rhythm 
and bodily movement give place, to a large extent, to the exer- 
cise of the imagination. "The play's the thing" for them then. 
They live in the story which they are making. Sometimes, with 
a sure dramatic instinct, they will enact the great tales of the 
Bible or of mythology, if they have read any. " Daniel-in-the- 
lion's den," " Aaron- the-High-Priest " and " Moses-with-his- 
arms-up" have become classical dramas in certain nurseries. 
Children have even been known to quarrel about who should 
be David and kill Goliath, in spite of the "counting out" rhyme 
which, the nursery code says, should settle such diflSculties. 
And when such play is natural and spontaneous, not that hor- 
rible modern substitute called "supervised play," children share 
an excitement close akin to creative lyrical emotion. Have 
we forgotten it all, we who were children only yesterday? 



38o NEW VOICES 

One other capacity of the poet children possess in a remark- 
able degree, the ability to name things for their flavors and quali- 
ties. We laugh when the baby calls the ocean "the big bath 
tub." We do not see, always, that, in so doing, he has made a 
poem, or what is a poem for him. It was the little children on 
the Pacific Coast who called the white forget-me-not the ''pop- 
corn-flower" because its tangle of blossoms heaped together 
in patches in the canyons, look like pop-corn. And that, in its 
own way, was a poem. In his admirable book, "The Enjo}^- 
ment of Poetry," Max Eastman pays tribute to children's 
ability to make poems of this kind. 

"Children are often intolerant of poetry in books," he says, 
"because they have it in reality. They need no literary as- 
sistance in getting acquainted with the live qualities of objects, 
or endowing them with their true names. Their minds are like 
skies full of floating imagery, and with this they evoke the in- 
most essences out of common things, discovering kinships in 
nature incredible to science and intolerable to common sense. 

The toast is a 'zebra.' 

'Nothing with a tail' is a snake. 

The cat purring is a 'bumblecat.' 

The white eggs in the incubator have ' blossomed.' 

But education soon robs them of this quaintness." 

In other words, education robs them of a part of the jo}^ of 
making poems. Children are poets. And when a very naughty 
boy is very angry the vivid iniquity of his "calling names" 
is as masterly as any of those impolite passages in Shakespeare 
that begin or end with references to a "lily-livered knave" 
or the hke. 

If we think about childhood long enough and honestly enough, 
we shall be willing to admit that children are poets and that 
they love poetry as poets love it. Although their knowledge 
of life is less than ours, although the range of their interests is 
limited to a certain extent by the walls of the nursery or the 
fence around the garden, their minds, in promise of capacity, are 



CHILDREN AND POETRY 381 

as good as ours. Their taste is sometimes better than ours, for 
it is the result of natural and sincere reactions, not of prejudice 
and unfortunate training. But they are not ready to enjoy all 
of the kinds of poetry which please or edify grown up people. 
And grown up people should be wise enough and tactful enough 
to offer them what they can enjoy, or at least not to make 
a burden of what should be a pleasure, by insisting that a 
child must like something which, it is quite evident, he does not 
like. 

What kind of poetry is usually offered to children? Do we 
offer them good vigorous ballads that satisfy the craving for 
stories and strong rhythms? Do we give them good folk poetry, 
folk songs and folk games, which are nearer than anything else 
to the kind of thing that children make for themselves? Or do 
we give them heavy moral treatises in prim meters, "rhymed 
ethics," clumsily versified "uplift?" These are questions that 
we must answer before we can say that they do not like poetry. 
"Evangeline" is all very well. Some children hke her very 
much. But how many children have liked " The Psalm of Life " 
with its dreary and formal stanzas beginning, "Tell me not in 
mournful numbers"? Many children learned that poem in the 
schools of twenty years ago who never learned another poem 
unless they were made to learn others by the force of will of their 
elders. Many worse poems are offered to children. Many 
worse poems are assigned for memory work. 

Something can be said, of course, for the educational value 
of what poets call "rhymed ethics." When moral maxims are 
set before us in verse they tend to be remembered rather better 
than when they are set before us in prose. But such didactic 
verses are seldom poetry. Why not be quite frank with children 
and say, "Here is a lesson or sermon written in verse. We want 
you to learn it and remember it because we beheve that these 
ideas will be good ones to live by. They have been put into 
verse because verse is easier to memorize and to remember than 
prose." If this were done children would get a clear-cut and 
true conception of the thing as it is. But harm is done when 



382 NEW VOICES 

we offer children, as beautiful poetry, what is not poetry and 
not, from the point of view of the artist, beautiful. 

*' Rhymed ethics" and poetry are both valuable, no doubt, 
but they are not valuable in the same way. They are not the 
same thing. Poetry is the sharing of Hf e in patterns of rhythmical 
words, a disciphne for the sympathies, a great art in which have 
been expressed the emotions of all great peoples. And since 
poetry is all this, it must be this for the child, within the limits 
of his capacity, a thing of joy, not a thing of labor and dullness, 
not anything utihtarian. 

If we would combine ethical training with the love of poetry 
or teach ethics through poetry, we must offer children master- 
pieces. And we must offer them without comment. We can 
do it best with great stories told in beautiful language. The 
Bible gives us many stories of this kind. And children nearly 
always hke Bible stories although they seldom understand and 
enjoy and reecho the majestic lyrical beauty of the Psalms. 
Stories in good poetry have immense ethical value when no 
moral is pointed out. "Dauber," by John Masefield, and ''Le- 
panto," by G. K. Chesterton, are fine poems for boys. But it 
is hardly tactful to tell a boy to read either one because it may 
do him good. That is the sort of thing that grown up people 
frequently do in dealing with children. They do not treat chil- 
dren with the consideration which they show for sensitive growTi 
up people, v/ho ca,n retaliate! 

Another reason why children sometimes disHke poetry is that 
schools sometimes make very hard work of it. In many schools 
the presentation of poetry is purely scientific and critical. 
Children learn to dissect — one might better say to vivisect — 
poems. They do not learn what is more important, to enjoy 
them. Yet poets made them to be enjoyed, not dissected. The 
critical and scientific study of poetry has its place in education 
and is very valuable. It is especially valuable for students 
who have already learned to enjoy poetry. It will do them no 
harm. But often critical and scientific study begins too soon, 
before children have felt the charm of poetry as an art. And 



CHILDREN AND POETRY 383 

often poetry is presented only in the scientific way, and not as an 
art at all! 

Psychologists have taught us something of the importance of 
the association of ideas and of the value of first impressions. If 
our first acquaintance with anything gives us pleasure, we are 
likely to seek that thing again. If our first acquaintance with 
it is tiresome and painful, we are likely to avoid it for the future, 
if we can. Many people of this generation have avoided poetry 
because their memories return to long dull afternoons, when, 
v/ith troubled minds and aching heads, they tried to scan Une 
upon line of lofty language, or looked up definitions of long, 
rhetorical words. Such were their first associations with poetry. 
They never learned to hke it. 

Poets, like other sensible people, beheve that children should 
work hard in school and that they should study grammar and 
rhetoric. But they would like to have children get the joy that 
can be found in poetry. They beheve that children should know, 
not only the rigors of hard work, but the happiness of sharing 
beauty. 

How, then, can children and poetry be introduced to each 
other? How can these two lovehest things in the world be 
brought together? Only in ways that are natural to childhood. 
We can read them good ballads and good folk poetry. Or, 
better still, we can "say" (not '^ recite") good poems for them, 
watching their faces to see whether they hke the poems or not. 
If they like the poems we choose, we can say them over and over 
again, by request of the audience. If they do not hke our sel- 
ections we can put away the poems that do not please, for a year 
or two. Then we may venture to offer them again. Of course 
we shall pay the children the compliment of offering only poetry 
which we sincerely respect. And, when we read to them, or 
say poems for them, we shall be careful to allow no eccentrici- 
ties of voice and manner to make the poetry ridiculous or to 
distract the minds of our audience. We shall be as simple, 
as natural, as unaffected and sincere as it is possible for us to be. 
When interesting poetry is presented in this way by a man or 



384 NEW VOICES 

woman with sympathy, imagination, and a pleasant voice, 
children do like it. Sometimes they like it better than they can 
teU. 

Men and women who have kept the gift of play, who can take 
part in children's games without being supervisors or intruders, 
can do much more than this to bring poetry close to the hearts of 
children. They can help the children to dramatize good poems, 
to make or invent poem-games and poem-dances. For poetry, 
like music, like play, should be a part of every day life for chil- 
dren. Children should never be led to suppose that poetry 
is an intellectual pastime for scholarly persons and a Httle more 
difficult and dangerous than the game of chess. It has never 
been that for poets. It has never been that for lovers of poetry. 
It should never be that for children. And it never is unless we 
make it that for them. They clamor for ^'Mother Goose." 
They would clamor for other poetry if we provided any other 
poetry that they would like and if we offered it tactfully. 

''But 'Mother Goose' is not poetry — not real poetry!" 
some serious-minded person will say. Why not? The rhythms 
of the nursery rhymes are fine, organic rhythms, absolutely true 
and in accord with the meanings which they accompany. The 
stories of the nursery rhymes are simple, direct, easy to under- 
stand, and told with masterly brevity. The rhymes are as 
good as any we offer children. And sometimes the lines sparkle 
with quaint imaginings. Such a line is the hne in " Miss Moffet '* 
in which it is recorded of the spider that he ''sat down beside 
her." It would be fun to see a spider sit down. Will no one 
rise to defend "Mother Goose?" Yes indeed. The nursery 
rhymes are excellent poetry of their kind. 

Children find keen delight in folk songs of the kind that are 
passed on from father to son and mother to daughter and never 
forgotten. Many children have found the beginnings of the love 
of poetry in the best of the *'Frog and Mouse" songs or in the 
gay and' fanciful ballad about "Old Mother Slipper Slopper" 
and the fox who went out on a wintry night, "to see what he 
could find to eat." Such poems will serve as t)^es of what 



CHILDREN AND POETRY 385 

children like and we may look through anthologies for poems of a 
similar kind, poems that have a simple story and strong rhythm. 

Contemporary poets have written a number of poems that 
children hke. Those quoted at the end of this chapter are all 
poems that have given real pleasure to real children. None have 
been quoted in the hope that they would please. All have been 
tested. And all are good poems, the work of good poets. It is 
not diihcult to find a poem here and another there that children 
can enjoy. 

To find books of poems that children will read over and over 
again for their own pleasure is a more difficult matter. Perhaps 
the best books of contemporary poetry for little children are 
''The Jungle Books" (first and second, prose and verse together) 
by Rudyard Kipling, and ^'Peacock Pie" by Walter de la 
Mare. 

Most of us know the poems in ''The Jungle Books." What 
very beautiful poetry they are! How strong and fluent in 
rhythm, how finely imagined, how stirring and satisfying in 
mood and story! To have grown up without a knowledge of 
"The Jungle Books" is to have grown up without something 
precious that all children should have. 

''Peacock Pie," much more recently published, is not so well 
known. But the little poems in it may well become immortal. 
It would be a fine thing if Santa Claus would give it to every- 
body. Grown up people whose minds are not severely melan- 
choly will enjoy the delicate fancy, the odd whimsies, the beauti- 
ful craftsmanship of this book as much as children. Children 
will enjoy the same things as much as grown up people. It 
is as deHghtful in poetry as "Alice In Wonderland" is in prose. 
It is difficult to be dull and stoHd with such a book at hand 
and every time we read these poems we like them a little bit 
better. Perhaps, some day, the story of Jim Jay and the story 
of the three jolly farmers, and the story of the old lady who went 
blackberry picking, "Half way over from Weep to Wicking," 
will be as widely known and dearly loved as the classical " Mother 
Hubbard." 



386 NEW VOICES 

Older children can enjoy many poems that Httle children do 
not understand. The range of their experience enlarges as they 
grow up and it is much easier to select poems that will please 
them. Robert Frost's poem about the Bacchic iniquity of the 
cow in apple time is a poem that amuses boys and girls who have 
lived in the country. They also like ''Brown's Descent." 
Vachel Lindsay's poem-games, like ^'The King of Yellow Butter- 
flies," have given pleasure to the groups of children who have 
played them. His social and choral poem about " King Solomon 
and the Queen of Sheba" can be worked out in dramatic form 
by bigger boys and girls. Fanny Stearns Davis' " Song of Conn 
The Fool" is a delight to most children who hear it. Little 
girls like her lyric, " Up a Hill and a HiU." 

Poets who have pleased children have taken for themselves 
laurel wreaths cast in bronze, wreaths that will never wither. 
And children who have learned the love of poetry will grow in 
that love as they grow in wisdom and stature. Children who 
have learned to care for poetry, or perhaps we should say chil- 
dren who have never been prevented from caring for poetry, 
are children especially protected against the lure of specious, 
time-wasting pleasures. They are children with a passion for 
heroic behavior. They have broader sympathies than children 
who do not know poetry. And they have been provided with 
the noblest, the least costly, and the most democratic of all 
recreations in a pleasure that will endure while life endures, as 
dear and absorbing in mellow old age as in harsh middle life or 
eager, restless childhood and youth. 

Moreover, the poems that give deUght to the children of to- 
day will be echoed in the beauty and vitality of the children of 
to-morrow. For the greatest power we know is the power of 
speech. The Word, with all its grace of meaning and melody, 
is the heritage of all of the children of men. It is their birth- 
right. There is no speech or language where their voice is not 
heard. But they speak to small purpose, nowadays, if they never 
use the bravest and most beautiful human speech, which is 
poetry. 



CHILDREN AND POETRY 387 

THE CHILD'S HERITAGE 

Oh, there are those, a sordid clan, 
With pride in gaud and faith in gold, 
Who prize the sacred soul of man 
For what his hands have sold. 

And these shall deem thee humbly bred: 
They shall not hear, they shall not see 
The kings among the lordly dead 
Who walk and talk with thee! 

A tattered cloak may be thy dole 
And thine the roof that Jesus had: 
The broidered garment of the soul 
Shall keep thee purple-clad! 

The blood of men hath dyed its brede. 
And it was wrought by holy seers 
With sombre dream and golden deed 
And pearled with women's tears. 

With Eld thy chain of days is one: 
The seas are still Homeric seas; 
Thy sky shall glow with Pindar's sun. 
The stars of Socrates! 

Unaged the ancient tide shall surge. 
The old Spring burn along the bough: 
The new and old for thee converge 
In one eternal Now! 

I give thy feet the hopeful sod, 

Thy mouth, the priceless boon of breath; 

The glory of the search for God 

Be thine in life and death! 

Unto thy flesh, the soothing dust; 
Thy soul, the gift of being free: 
The torch my fathers gave in trust, 
Thy father gives to thee! 

John G. Neihardt 



388 NEW VOICES 

POEMS THAT CHILDREN LIKE 

LYRIC FROM "THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE" 

The wind blows out of the gates of day, 

The wind blows over the lonely of heart, 

And the lonely of heart is withered away, 

While the faeries dance in a place apart, 

Shaking their milk-white feet in a ring, 

Shaking their milk-white arms in the air; 

For they hear the wind laugh, and murmur and sing 

Of a land where even the old are fair, 

And even the wise are merry of tongue; 

But I heard a reed of Coolaney say, 

"When the wind has laughed and murmured and sung, 

The lonely of heart is withered away." 

William Butler Yeats 



ROAD-SONG OF THE BANDAR LOG* 

Here we go in a flung festoon. 
Half-way up to the jealous moon! 
Don't you envy our pranceful bands? 
Don't you wish you had extra hands? 
Wouldn't you like if your tails were — so — 
Curved in the shape of a Cupid's bow? 
Now you're angry, but — never mind, 
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind! 

Here we sit in a branchy row, 
Thinking of beautiful things we know; 
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do. 
All complete, in a minute or two — 
Something noble and grand and good. 
Won by merely wishing we could. 
Now we're going to — never mind. 
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind! 

' Taken from The Jungle Book by ptrmission of The Century Co. 



CHILDREN AND POETRY 389 

All the talk we ever have heard 
Uttered by bat or beast or bird — 
Hide or fin or scale or feather- 
Jabber it quickly and all together! 
Excellent! Wonderful! Once again! 
Now we are talking just like men. 

Let's pretend we are . . . never mind, 

Brother, thy tail hangs down hehindl 

This is the way of the Monkey-kind. 

Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines , 
That rocket by where, light and high, the wild-grape swings. 
By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make, 
Be sure, be sure, we're going to do some splendid things! 

Rudyard Kipling 



UP A HILL AND A HILL 

Up a hill and a hill there's a sudden orchard-slope, 

And a little tawny field in the sun; 
There's a gray wall that coils Hke a twist of frayed-out rope, 

And grasses nodding news one to one. 

LTp a hill and a hill there's a windy place to stand, 
And between the apple-boughs to find the blue 

Of the sleepy summer sea, past the cliffs of orange sand, 
With the white charmed ships sliding through. 

Up a hill and a hill there's a httle house as gray 
As a stone that the glaciers scored and stained; 

With a red rose by the door, and a tangled garden-way. 
And a face at the window checker-paned. 

I could climb, I could climb, till the shoes fell off my feet. 

Just to find that tawny field above the sea! 
Up a hill and a hill,— oh, the honeysuckle's sweet! 

And the eyes at the window watch for me! 

Fannie Stearns Davis 



390 NEW VOICES 



THE SONGS OF CONN THE FOOL 

MOON POLLY 

I 

I will go up the mountain after the Moon: 
She is caught in a dead fir-tree. 
Like a great pale apple of silver and pearl, 
Like a great pale apple is she. 

I will leap and will catch her with quick cold hands 
And carry her home in my sack. 
I will set her down safe on the oaken bench 
That stands at the chimney-back. 

And then I will sit by the fire all night, 
And sit by the fire all day. 
I will gnaw at the Moon to my heart's delight 
Till I gnaw her slowly away. 

And while I grow mad with the Moon's cold taste 
The World will beat at my door, 
Crying "Come out!" and crying "Make haste, 
And give us the Moon once more!" 

But I shall not answer them ever at all. 
I shall laugh, as I count and hide 
The great black beautiful Seeds of the Moon 
In a flower-pot deep and wide. 

Then I shall lie down and go fast asleep, 
Drunken with flame and aswoon. 
But the seeds will sprout and the seeds will leap, 
The subtle swift seeds of the Moon. 

And some day, all of the World that cries 
And beats at my door shall see 
A thousand moon-leaves spring from my thatch 
On a wonderful white Moon-tree! 



CHILDREN AND POETRY 391 

Then each shall have Moons to his heart's desire: 
Apples of silver and pearl; 
Apples of orange and copper fire 
Setting his five wits aswirl! 

And then they will thank me, who mock me now, 
"Wanting the Moon is he," — 
Oh, I'm off to the mountain after the Moon, 
Ere she falls from the dead fir-tree! 

Fannie Stearns Davis 



BROWN'S DESCENT 

OR 

THE WILLY-NILLY SLIDE 

Brown lived at such a lofty farm 
That everyone for miles could see 

His lantern when he did his chores 
In winter after half past three. 

And many must have seen him make 
His wild descent from there one night, 

* Cross lots, ' cross walls, ' cross everything, 
Describing rings of lantern light. 

Between the house and barn the gale 
Got him by something he had on 

And blew him out on the icy crust 
That cased the world, and he was gone! 

Walls were all buried, trees were few: 

He saw no stay unless he stove 
A hole in somewhere with his heel. 

But though repeatedly he strove 

And stamped and said things to himself. 
And sometimes something seemed to yield. 

He gained no foothold, but pursued 
His journey down from field to field. 



392 NEW VOICES 

Sometimes he came with arms outspread 
Like wings, revolving in the scene 

Upon his longer axis, and 
With no small dignity of mien. 

Faster or slower as he chanced, 
Sitting or standing as he chose, 

According as he feared to risk 

His neck, or thought to spare his clothes. 

He never let the lantern drop. 

And some exclaimed who saw afar 
The figures he described with it, 

"I wonder what those signals are 

Brown makes at such an hour of night! 

He's celebrating something strange. 
I wonder if he's sold his farm, 

Or been made Master of the Grange." 

He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked; 

He fell and made the lantern rattle 
(But saved the light from going out.) 

So-half-way down he fought the battle 

Incredulous of his own bad luck. 

And then becoming reconciled 
To everything, he gave it up 

And came down like a coasting child. 

"Well-I-be-" that was all he said, 
As standing in the river road. 

He looked back up the slippery slope 
(Two miles it was) to his abode. 

Sometimes as an authority 
On motor-cars, I'm asked if I 

Should say our stock was petered out 
And this is my sincere reply: 



CHILDREN AND POETRY 

Yankees are what they always were. 

Don't think Brown ever gave up hope 
Of getting home again because 

He couldn't climb that slippery slope; 

Or even thought of standing there 

Until the January thaw 
Should take the polish off the crust. 

He bowed with grace to natural law, 

And then went round it on his feet, 
After the manner of our stock; 

Not much concerned for those to whom, 
At that particular time o'clock. 

It must have looked as if the course 
He steered was really straight away 

From that which he was headed for — 
Not much concerned for them, I say; 

No more so than became a man — 
And politician at odd seasons. 

I've kept Brown standing in the cold 
While I invested him with reasons; 

But now he snapped his eyes three times; 

Then shook his lantern saying, "He's 
'Bout out!" and took the long way home 

By road, a matter of several miles. 



393 



Robert Frost 



THE BRONCHO THAT WOULD NOT BE BROKEN 

A little colt — ^broncho, loaned to the farm 
To be broken in time without fury or harm. 
Yet black crows flew past you, shouting alarm, 
Calling "Beware," with lugubrious singing . . . 
The butterflies there in the bush were romancing. 
The smell of the grass caught your soul in a trance. 
So why be a-fearing the spurs and the traces, 
O broncho that would not be broken of dancing? 



394 NEW VOICES 

You were born with the pride of the lords great and olden 
Who danced, through the ages, in corridors golden. 
In all the wide farm-place the person most human. 
You spoke out so plainly with squeaKng and capering, 
With whinnying, snorting, contorting and prancing, 
As you dodged your pursuers, looking askance, 
With Greek-footed figures, and Parthenon paces, 
O broncho that would not be broken of dancing. 

The grasshoppers cheered. "Keep whirling," they said. 

The insolent sparrows called from the shed 

^'If men will not laugh, make them wish they were dead." 

But arch were your thoughts, all malice displacing, 

Though the horse-killers came, with snake-whips advancing. 

You bantered and cantered away your last chance. 

And they scourged you; with Hell in their speech and their faces, 

O broncho that would not be broken of dancing. 

"Nobody cares for you," rattled the crows, 
As you dragged the whole reaper next day down the rows. 
The three mules held back, yet you danced on your toes. 
You pulled like a racer, and kept the mules chasing. 
You tangled the harness with bright eyes side-glancing, 
While the drunk driver bled you — a pole for a lance — 
And the giant mules bit at you — ^keeping their places. 
O broncho that would not be broken of dancing. 

In that last afternoon your boyish heart broke. 

The hot wind came down like a sledge-hammer stroke. 

The blood-sucking flies to a rare feast awoke. 

And they searched out your wounds, your death-warrant tracing. 

And the merciful men, their religion enhancing, 

Stopped the red reaper to give you a chance. 

Then you died on the prairie, and scorned all disgraces, 

O broncho that would not be broken of dancing. 

Vachel Lindsay 



CHILDREN AND POETRY 395 

DAYS TOO SHORT* 

When Primroses are out in Spring 

And small, blue violets come between; 

When merry birds sing on boughs green, 
And rills, as soon as born, must sing; 

When butterflies will make side-leaps, 

As though escaped from Nature's hand 

Ere perfect quite; and bees will stand 
Upon their heads in fragrant deeps; 

When small clouds are so silvery white 
Each seems a broken rimmed moon — 
When such things are, this world too soon. 

For me, doth wear the veil of Night. 

William H. Davies 



THE RAIN* 

I hear leaves drinking Rain 

I hear rich leaves on top 
Giving the poor beneath 

Drop after drop; 
'Tis a sweet noise to hear 
These green leaves drinking near. 

And when the Sun comes out, 

After this rain shall stop, 
A wondrous Light will fill 

Each dark, round drop; 
I hope the Sun shines bright; 
'Twill be a lovely sight. 

William H. Davies 

*By arrangement with Mr. Davies' London publisher, A. C. Fifield. 



396 NEW VOICES 



LEPANTO* 

White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, 

And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; 

There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, 

It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard, 

It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his Hps, 

For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his.ships. 

They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy, 

They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea, 

And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss, 

And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross. 

The cold queen of England is looking in the glass; 

The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass; 

From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun, 

And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun. 

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard, 

Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred. 

Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall, 

The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall. 

The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung. 

That once went singing southward when all the world was young. 

In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid. 

Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade. 

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far, 

Don John of Austria is going to the war. 

Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold 

In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold, 

Torchhght crimson on the copper kettle-drums, 

Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes. 

Don John laughing in the brave beard curled, 

Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of aU the world. 

Holding his head up for a flag of all the free. 

Love-Hght of Spain — ^hurrah! 

Death-light of Africa! 

Don John of Austria 

Is riding to the sea. 

* By special arrangement with Mr. Chesterton's London pubh'shers, Messrs Bums and 
Gates. 



CHILDREN AND POETRY 397 

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star, 

{Do7i John of Austria is going to the war.) 

He moves a mighty turban on the timeless hoiiri's knees, 

His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas. 

He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease, 

And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees, 

And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring 

Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing. 

Giants and the Genii, 

Multiplex of wing and eye, 

Whose strong obedience broke the sky 

When Solomon was king. 

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn. 

From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn; 

They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea 

Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be; 

On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl. 

Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl; 

They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground, — 

They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound. 

And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can 

hide. 
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide, 
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest. 
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west. 
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun. 
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done, 
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know 
The voice that shook our palaces — four hundred years ago: 
It is he that saith not ' Kismet; ' it is he that knows not Fate; 
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate! 
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth, 
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth." 
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar, 
{Don John of Austria is going to the war.) 
Sudden and still — hurrah! 
Bolt from Iberia! 
Don John of Austria 
Is gone by Alcalar. 



398 NEW VOICES 

St. Michael's on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north 

{Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.) 

Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift 

And the sea-folk labor and the red sails lift. 

He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone; 

The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone; 

The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes 

And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise, 

And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room, 

And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom, 

And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee, 

But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea. 

Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse 

Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips. 

Trumpet that sayeth ha! 

Domino gloria! 
Don John of Austria 
Is shouting to the ships. 

King Philip's in his closet with the Fleece about his neck 

{Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.) 

The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin, 

And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in. 

He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon. 

He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon, 

And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey 

Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day 

And death is in the phial and the end of noble work. 

But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk. 

Don John's hunting, and his hounds have bayed — 

Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid. 

Gun upon gun, ha! ha! 

Gun upon gun, hurrah! 

Don John of Austria 

Has loosed the cannonade. 

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke, 

{Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.) 

The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year. 

The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear. 



CHILDREN AND POETRY 



399 



He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea 

The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery; 

They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark, 

They veil the plumed Hons on the galleys of St. Mark; 

And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs, 

And below the ships are prisons where with multitudinous griefs, 

Christian captives sick and sunless, all a laboring race repines 

Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines. 

They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung 

The stairways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young. 

They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on 

Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon. 

And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell 

Where a yeflow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell. 

And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign — 

{But Don John of Austria has burst the battle line!) 

Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop, 

Purpling aU the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop, 

Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds. 

Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds, 

Thronging of the thousands up that labor under sea 

White for bHss and bHnd for sun and stunned for liberty. 

Vivat Hispania! 

Domino Gloria! 

Don John of Austria 

Has set his people free! 

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath 

{Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.) 

And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain, 

Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain. 

And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade. . 

{But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.) 

G. K. Chesterton 



INDEX OF POEMS 

PAGE 

Absolution Siegfried Sassoon 256 

After Sunset . Grace Hazard Conkling 145 

After Two Years Richard Aldington 286 

Aladdin and the Jinn Vachel Lindsay 282 

"All Vision Fades, but Splendor 

Does not Die" Samuel Roth 347 

An April Morning Bliss Carman 48 

Anne Rutledge Edgar Lee Masters 374 

Answer, The Sara Teasdale 48 

Around the Sun Katherine Lee Bates 168 

Ash Wednesday John Erskine 163 

Assault Heroic, The Robert Graves 257 

At Night Alice Meynell 141 

Bacchante to her Babe, The Eunice Tietjens 78 

Ballad of the Cross, The Theodosia Garrison 317 

Bird and the Tree, The Ridgely Torrence 369 

Birth, The Don Marquis 312 

Black Vulture, The George Sterling 343 

Bombardment, The ' Amy Lowell 72 

Breakfast Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 255 

Broadway Hermann Hagedorn 231 

Broncho That Would not be 

Broken, The Vachel Lindsay 393 

Brown's Descent Robert Frost 391 

Bull, The Ralph Hodgson 97 

Caliban in the Coal Mines Louis Untermeyer 229 

Calling-One's-Own (translation).. .Charles Fenno Hoffman 282 

Canticle William Griffith 346 

Cargoes John Masefield 96 

Cedars, The Josephine Preston Peabody . . 44 

Certain American Poets Odell Shepard 144 

Cherry Way Ruth Comfort Mitchell 230 

Child Carl Sandburg 314 

401 



402 INDEX OF POEMS 

PAGE 

Child's Heritage, The John G. Neihardt 387 

Christmas Folk Song, A Lizette Woodworth Reese. . . 313 

Cinquains : 

The Warning Adelaide Crapsey 26 

November Night " " 44 

Fate Defied " " 44 

The Guarded Wound " " 44 

Night Winds " " 93 

Clay Hills Jean Starr Untermeyer 191 

Coming to Port Max Eastman 71 

Common Street, The Helen Gray Cone 229 

Comrade Jesus Sarah M. Cleghorn 314 

Consecration, A John Masefield 228 

Cool Tombs Carl Sandburg 192 

Cornucopia of Red and Green Com- 
fits, The Amy Lowell 265 

Cow in Apple Time, The Robert Frost 141 

Cuckoo, The Francis Carlin 91 

Da Leetla Boy Thomas Augustine Dal)^ 375 

Dark Cavalier, The Margaret Widdemer no 

Dawn Richard Aldington 254 

Day For Wandering, A CHnton Scollard 336 

Days Too Short William H. Davies 395 

Daybreak Louis Untermeyer 142 

Dead, The Rupert Brooke 253 

Deirdre James Stephens , 47 

Desire in Spring Francis Ledwidge . 334 

Down Fifth Avenue John Curtis Underwood 263 

Draw the Sword, O Republic Edgar Lee Masters 262 

Dying Patriot, The James Elroy Flecker 43 

Earth John Hall Wheelock 328 

End of the World, The Gordon Bottomley 134 

Epitaph Louise DriscoU 338 

Falconer of God, The William Rose Ben^t 307 

Father, The Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 255 

Flammonde Edwin Arlington Robinson . . 366 

Flight, The George Edward Woodberry. . 170 

Flower Factory, The Florence Wilkinson 231 

Fog Carl Sandburg 86 



INDEX OF POEMS 403 

PAGE 

Forty Singing Seamen Alfred Noyes 159 

Fox, The Kahlil Gibran 96 

Frost in Spring Jessie B. Rittenhouse 289 

"Frost To-night" Edith M. Thomas 108 

Fugitives, The Florence Wilkinson 234 

Furrow and the Hearth, The Padraic Colum 333 

"God, You Have Been Too Good 

to Me" Charles Wharton Stork 309 

Good Company Karle Wilson Baker 311 

Grandmither, Think Not I Forget . Willa Sibert Gather 288 

Greek Folk Song: A Cyprian 

Woman Margaret Widdemer 45 

Greek Folk Song: Remembrance. . . Margaret Widdemer 77 

Grieve Not for Beauty Witter Byimer 133 

Gum Gatherer, The Robert Frost 139 

Het Words Anna Hempstead Branch 131 

Homage Helen Hoyt 290 

House and the Road, The Josephine Preston Peabody . . . 296 

How Much of Godhood Louis Untermeyer 285 

"I Am in Love with High, Far- 
seeing Places" (Sonnet) Arthur Davison Ficke 284 

"I Could not Sleep for Thinking 

of the Sky" (Sonnet) John Masefield 336 

"I Have a Rendezvous with 

Death " Alan Seeger 261 

"I Sat among the Green Leaves" . . Marjorie L. C. Pickthall 288 

I Would Live in Your Love Sara Teasdale 294 

Idealists Alfred Krejmiborg 193 

Interlude Scudder Middleton 139 

In the Mohave Patrick Orr 341 

In the Poppy Field James Stephens 138 

Indian Summer WilHam Ellery Leonard 41 

Invocation, Max Eastman 310 

Iron Music, The Ford Madox Hueffer 260 

Isaiah Beethoven Edgar Lee Masters 373 

Jew to Jesus, The Florence Kiper Frank 316 

Jim Jay Walter de la Mare 14 

June Francis Ledwidge 335 

Kiss, The Siegfried Sassoon 256 



404 INDEX OF POEMS 

PAGE 

Lamp, The Sara Teasdale 294 

Last Days, The George SterUng 342 

Leaden-Eyed, The Vachel Lindsay 228 

Leaves Sara Teasdale 137 

Lepanto G. K. Chesterton 396 

Lincoln, The Man of the People. .Edwin Markham 105 

Listeners, The Walter de la Mare 76 

Little Things Orrick Johns 81 

Loam Carl Sandburg 192 

Lord of My Heart's Elation Bhss Carman 306 

Love Came Back at Fall o' Dew. .Lizette Woodworth Reese. . . 293 

Love is a Terrible Thing Grace Fallow Norton 292 

Love Song Harriet Monroe 292 

Lucinda Matlock Edgar Lee Masters 374 

Lynmouth Widow, A Amelia Josephine Burr 291 

Lyric from "The Land of Heart's 

Desire" William Butler Yeats 388 

Man with the Hoe, The Edwui Markham 235 

Martin Joyce Kilmer ■ . 362 

Maternity Alice Meynell 294 

Merchants from Cathay V/illiam Rose Benet - . 371 

Messages, The Wilfrid Wilson Gibson ..... 254 

Miniver Cheevy Edwin Arlington Robinson , . 365 

Miss Loo Walter de la Mare 363 

Monosyllabic Carl Sandburg 56 

Monotone Carl Sandburg 72 

Moon Folly Fannie Stearns Davis 390 

Morning Song of Senlin, The Conrad Aiken 344 

Most Sacred Mountain, The Eunice Tietjens 80 

Motherhood Agnes Lee 295 

Mountain Song Harriet Monroe 340 

"My Lady Ne'er Hath Given Her- 
self to Me" (Sonnet) George Edward Woodberry,. 171 

My Light with Yours Edgar Lee Masters 284 

My Mirror Aline Kilmer 297 

Mystery Scudder Middleton 139 

Narratives Rabindranath Tagore. . . .311-312 

Nature's Friend William H. Davies 339 

Nearer Robert Nichols 259 



INDEX OF POEMS 405 

PAGE 

New World, The (Selection) Witter Bynner 239 

Night James Oppeiiheim 188 

Night's Mardi Gras Edward J. Wheeler 233 

Nirvana John Hall Wheelock 286 

Old Age Percy Mackaye 133 

Old Bed, The Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 135 

Old Houses of Flanders, The Ford Madox Huefler 260 

Old Manuscript Alfred Kreymborg 193 

Old Man's Winter Night, An Robert Frost 364 

Old Woman, The Joseph Campbell 213 

Old Woman of the Roads, An. . . .Padraic Colum 109 

"On the Day when the Lotus 

Bloomed" Rabindranath Tagore 27 

On the Great Plateau Edith Wyatt 343 

Out of Trenches: The Barn, Twi- 
light Robert Nichols 258 

Pandora's Song William Vaughn ]Moody 107 

Paper Roses Dana Burnet 115 

Path Flower Olive Tilford Dargan 172 

Path of the Stars, The . Thomas S. Jones, Jr 308 

Patrins Jessie B. Rittenhouse 290 

Patterns Amy Lowell S3 

Peace Sara Teasdale 293 

Penetralia Madison Cawein 331 

Perennial May Thomas Augustine Daly 287 

Psalm Jessie E. Sampter 46 

Rain, Rain Zoe Akins 290 

Rain, The William H. Davies 395 

Renascence Edna St. Vincent Millay. ... 36 

Richard Cory Edwin Arlington Robinson . . 365 

Road-Song of the Bandar-Log . . . .Rudyard Kipling 388 

Roses in the Subway Dana Burnet 234 

Rouge Bouquet Joyce Kilmer 269 

Runner in the Skies, The James Oppenheim 177 

Sacrifice Ada Foster Murray 296 

Said a Blade of Grass Kahlil Gibran no 

Said the Sun James Oppenheim 178 

Santa Barbara Beach Ridgely Torrence 340 

Sante Fe Trail Vachel Lindsay 67 



4o6 INDEX OF POEMS 

PAGE 

Scum o' the Earth Robert Haven Schauffler . ... 237 

Sea Gods H. D 102 

Seal Lullaby Rudyard Kipling 76 

Ships John Masefield 146 

Silver Walter de la Mare 108 

**So Beautiful You are Indeed". . .Irene Rutherford McLeod . . . 287 

Song Florence Earle Coates. . . . 1 16-159 

Song of the Full Catch Constance Lindsay Skinner. . 81 

Song of Wandering Aengus William Butler Yeats 132 

Sound of the Trees, The Robert Frost 337 

Spring John Gould Fletcher 138 

Spring Sows Her Seeds Mary Carolyn Davies 268 

Standards Charles Wharton Stork 106 

Strong Woman, The Roscoe Gilmore Stott 212 

Sunrise on Rydal Water John Drinkwater 136 

Symbols John Drinkwater iii 

Tampico Grace Hazard Conkling 45 

" There are Strange Shadows Fos- 
tered of the Moon" (Sonnet) . . .Arthur Davison Ficke 285 

Time Clock, The Charles Hanson Towne 232 

Transformations Thomas Hardy 330 

Trees Joyce Kilmer 310 

Two Voices Alice Corbin 309 

Unbeliever, An Anna Hempstead Branch. ... 315 

Up a Hill and a Hill. . .' Fannie Stearns Davis 389 

From "Variations" Conrad Aiken 109, 141 

Vigil of Joseph, The Elsa Barker 313 

Virgin's Slumber Song, The Francis CarHn 75 

Vistas OdeU Shepard 144 

What Dim Arcadian Pastures .... Alice Corbin 49 

White Iris Pauline B. Barrington 107 

Who Loves the Rain Frances Shaw 45 

"The Wind Blew Words" Thomas Hardy 330 

Windmills John Gould Fletcher 104 

Winds, The(Sonnet) Madison Cawein 332 

Woman, A Scudder Middleton 213 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 

Aiken, Conrad, 109, 142, 319, Coates, Florence Earle, 116, 159 

326, 346 Colum, Padraic, 11, 91, no, 206, 

Akins, Zoe, 290 323, 324, 334 

Aldington, Richard, 88, 254, 286 Cone, Helen Gray, 230 

Aldis, Mary, 353 Conkling, Grace Hazard, 11, 45, 

Baker, Karle Wilson, 311 145 

Barker, Elsa, 4, 304, 314 Corbin, Alice, 49, 310 

Barrington, Pauline B., 107 Crapsey, Adelaide, 26, 44, 93 

Bates, Katherine Lee, 149, 170 Cronyn, George, 273 

Ben6t, William Rose, 197, 201, Crow, Martha Foote, 302 

202, 203, 301, 308, 373 Daly, Thomas Augustine, 287, 

Binyon, Laurence, 245 362, 376 

Bottomley, Gordon, 11, 135, 227, Dargan, OHve Tilford, 157, 174 

350 Davies, Mary Carolyn, 269 

Braithwaite, William Stanley, 5 Davies, William H., 92, 322, 340, 

Branch, Anna Hempstead, 132, 395 

149, 305, 316 Davis, Fannie Stearns, 386, 389, 

Bridges, Robert, 208 391 

Brooke, Rupert, 3, 11, 91, 227, de la Mare, Walter, 11, 14, 61, 

246, 247, 254 62, 77, 90, 108, 351, 353, 362, 

Brownell, William Crary, 215 364, 385 

Burnet, Dana, 114, 235 Drinkwater, John, in, 137 

Burr, Amelia Josephine, 291 Driscoll, Louise, 339 

Bynner, Witter, 8, 11, 95, 113, Dunsany, Lord, 8, 150 

133, 217, 241, 302, 353, 354 Eastman, Max, 61, 72, 302, 310, 

Campbell, Joseph, 213 380 

Carlin, Francis, 76, 91 Eliot, T. S., 182, 183 

Carman, Bliss, 2, 48, 117, 149, Erskine, John, 168 

275, 300, 307 Ficke, Arthur Davison, 11, 22, 

Gather, Willa Sibert, 289 95, 113, 274, 284, 285 

Cawein, Madison, 332 Flecker, James Elroy, 43 

Chesterton, G. K., 60, 151, 245, Fletcher, John Gould, 28, 56, 93, 

275, 382, 399 105, 138 

Cleghom, Sarah N., 304, 315 Frank, Florence Kiper, 305, 316 

407 



4o8 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



Frost, Robert, 3, 7, 11, 6$, 64, 
127, 128, 140, 141, 179, 195, 
207, 321, 337, 352, 354, J65, 
386, 393 
Garrison, Theodosia, 303, 317 
Gibran, Kahlil, 27, 95, iii 
Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson, 11, 113, 
126, 127, 136, 218, 227, 247, 
248, 255, 350, 351, 362 
Graves, Robert, 249, 250, 258 
Griffith, William, 346 
Hagedorn, Hermann, 2ji 
Hardy, Thomas, 245, 320, 330, 

331 
H. D., 88, 90, 104 
Head, Cloyd, 186 
Hodgson, Ralph, 11, 96, 102 
Hoffman, Charles Fenno, 282 
Housman, A. E., 275, 321, 324 
Howells, William Dean, 6 
Hoyt, Helen, 278, 291 
Hueffer, Ford Madox, 250, 260, 

261 
Jones, Thomas S., Jr., 302, 309 
Johns, Orrick, 82 
Kilmer, Alme, 297, 301 
Kihner, Joyce, 252, 253, 271, 311, 

353, 362, 363 
Kipling, Rudyard, 62, 76, 151, 

245, 385, 389 
Krejmiborg, Alfred, 185, 186, 193 
Ledwidge, Francis, 335 
Leonard, William Ellery, 43 
Lee, Agnes, 296 
Lindsay, Vachel, 3, 5, 8, 11, 64, 

65, 71, 128, 129, 179, 195, 216, 

229, 283, 352, 354, 386, 394 
Lowell, Amy, 3, 11, 22, 25, 26, 31, 

36, 54, 58, 59, 74, 88, 89, 90, 

175, 252, 268 



Mackaye, Percy, 134 
Markham, Edwin, 8, 93, 106, 203, 

211, 216, 236 
Marquis, Don, 298, 313 
Masefield, John, 2, 11, 96, 113, 

123, 126, 148, 195, 197, 220, 

221, 222, 228, 246, 327, 336, 

351, 352, 362, 382 
Masters, Edgar Lee, 3, 5, 251, 

263, 284, 354, 357, 358, 359, 

360, 361, 374, 375 
McLeod, Irene Rutherford, 277, 

288 
Meynell, Alice, 141, 295 
Middleton, Scudder, 139, 213 
Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 41 
Mitchell, Ruth Comfort, 230, 

353 
Monro, Harold, 327 
Monroe, Harriet, 5, 6, 112, 113, 

186, 205, 223, 293, 340 
Moody, William Vaughn, 2, 107, 

179 
Murray, Ada Foster, 149, 296 
Neihardt, John G., 387 
Newbolt, Henry, 245 
Nichols, Robert, 249, 250, 259 
Norton, Grace Fallow, 277, 292 
Noyes, Alfred, 152, 153, 154, 155, 

157, 163 
Oppenheim, James, 177, 178, 179, 

180, 182, 191, 219 
Orr, Patrick, 324, 342 
Patterson, William Morrison, 59 
Peabody, Josephine Preston, 44, 

281, 297 
Pickthall, Marjorie L. C, 288 
Pound, Ezra, 54, 182, 183, 184, 

185, 305 
Reedy, William Marion, 5 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



409 



Reese, Lizette Woodworth, 149, 

293, 303, 313 
Rittenhouse, Jessie B., 4, 156, 

289, 290 
Roberts, Charles G. D., 149 
Robinson, Edwin Arlington, 11, 

354, 355, 356, 357, 362, 365, 

366, 369 
Roth, Samuel, 6, 347 
Sampter, Jessie E., 26, 47 
Sandburg, Carl, 5, 55, 56, 57, 72, 

86, 180, 181, 182, 192, 195, 217, 

218, 303, 304, 314 
Sassoon, Siegfried, 11, 248, 249, 

250, 256 
Schauffler, Robert Haven, 239, 

353 
Scollard, Clinton, 337 
Seeger, Alan, 250, 262 
Shaw, Frances, 45 
Shepard, Odell, 144, 145 
Skinner, Constance Lindsay, 55, 

57,81,117 
Stephens, James, 11, 29, 48, 139 
Sterling, George, 325, 342, 343 
Stevens, Wallace, 85 
Stork, Charles Wharton, 6, 106, 

309 
Stott, Roscoe Gilmore, 212, 213 



Tagore, Rabindranath, 3, 5, 27, 

95, 312 
Teasdale, Sara, 3, 11, 49, 130, 

137, 19s, 199, 201, 278, 281,294 
Thomas, Edith M., 92, 108 
Thomas, Edward, 323, 324 
Tietjens, Eunice, 57, 80, 81, 118, 

223 
Torrence, Ridgely, 341, 370 
Towne, Charles Hanson, 233 
Underwood, John Curtis, 265 
Untermeyer, Jean Starr, 191, 281 
Untermeyer, Louis, 113, 143, 184, 

216, 229, 28s, 353 
Watson, William, 320 
Wheeler, Edward J., 4, 234 
Wheelock, John Hall, 286, 319, 

330 
Widdemer, Margaret, 30, 46, 62, 

78, no, 196, 219 
Wilkinson, Florence, 231, 234, 

353 
Williams, William Carlos, 226 
Wood, Clement, 176, 177 
Woodberry, George E., 156, 157, 

171 
Wyatt, Edith, 325, 344 
Yeats, William Butler, 11, 64, 

113, 133, 208, 388 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




